In space no one can hear you bleed, but what about on a private spacecraft?
The commercial aviation industry has medical care standards, as does NASA for traditional space missions. Eventually someone is going to tell Elon Musk and Richard Brandon that the commercial space transportation industry will need to define medical care practices as well.
There are well-known risks, of course, but there can be disclaimers 400 pages long and if an attorney stands in front of a jury and talks about what lax safety standards there are, someone with the passionate pleading skill of John Edwards will get a judgment that runs their companies into bankruptcy.
Government-accepted standards would make a lot of that go away and the establishment of Medical Levels of Care to account for the different phases of suborbital and orbital missions, as described in an article in New Space.
Stefan Neis and David Klaus, University of Colorado, Boulder, review current medical care practices in the civilian aviation industry and traditional space exploration sector and offer suggestions for defining appropriate on-board levels of medical care for the commercial space transportation industry, related to different types and phases of flight.
Suborbital tourist flights, for example, might require motion sickness and pain medications, oxygen masks, and possibly pressure suits onboard; whereas longer-term orbital flights would necessitate a higher level of care, including emergency medical equipment and training and perhaps spacesuits.
Citation: Considerations Toward Defining Medical “Levels of Care” for Commercial Spaceflight
Neis Stefan M. and Klaus David M.. New Space. December 2014, 2(4): 165-177. doi:10.1089/space.2014.0018
What Are The Medical Safety Needs Of Civilian Space Travel?
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