"The Martian" Just Happened – In Antarctica
Rescuers succeed in evacuating sick workers at the South Pole, Washington Post
“For the third time ever, rescue workers have successfully evacuated someone from the South Pole during the brutal Antarctic winter, the National Science Foundation said. A plane carrying two sick workers from the Amundsen-Scott research station arrived on the Antarctic Coast early Wednesday afternoon, following a harrowing 10-hour flight across the continent. Both workers require medical attention not available at the station, prompting the rare rescue effort. … Typically, none of the 50 or so people who overwinter at Amundsen-Scott can leave between February and October. One former worker described the South Pole as more inaccessible than the International Space Station.”
Ailing Antarctic personnel transported to safety, nsf
“NSF determined that an evacuation was warranted and called on Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air Ltd., which has a U.S. government contract to fly in support of U.S. Antarctic Program science, to conduct this mission.”
Keith’s note: I have flown in Kenn Borek Twin Otter planes multiple times in the arctic. More than once my pilot was an antarctic veteran – in once case, a mid-winter medical rescue pilot. These folks really, really know their stuff.
Surely folks invited to overstay are carefully vetted by docs– the point being that emergencies can happen to anybody.
Contemplating populating Mars seems inconceivable without fully equipped modern facilities and trained doctors. Even so these docs would have no idea how to, say, conduct surgery in flight. What if someone suffers accidental amputation, for instance, not a stretch where people will be building new habitats and homes. Appendicitis, impacted teeth, kidney stones– the list goes on and on without including infectious disease or any of the myriad cancers inflicting the human body.
There is so much biology– and biology tech – to learn.
I know! Let’s build a space station where we can take the first few baby steps towards comprehensive space medicine!
“Let’s build a space station where we can take the first few baby steps towards comprehensive space medicine”
We have had space stations since the early 70’s. How long should we inhabit LEO only waiting for enough emergencies to occur so we can gain sufficient “space medicine” knowledge?
It’s a good point. Mars is far enough away that tele-surgery is not really going to be possible for colonists on the planet. They’ll have to bring along doctors and enough medical facilities to treat problems in a colony, and hope for the best on the regular small-crew missions.
I was actually thinking about emergencies in space, during the long haul between Mars-Earth; that trip will likely always require many many months, and as far as I know there’s been no real research on, say, surgical techniques in zero G, for instance, or pulling a tooth.
The Skylab astronauts were all trained to pull teeth, and did a few extractions under the guidance of a dentist.
Didn’t recall that, but did a search and found an old reuters story. Apparently they also spent time in emergency wards learning how to stitch people, and they had facilities for culturing bacteria.
However the sorts of things that Keith posted about–that is, the illness requiring evacuation from Antarctica– haven’t been studied as far as I know or been able to learn. This would include surgery certainly and other medical procedures that could be well-studied on ISS.
https://news.google.com/new…
Did a quick search and found these articles:
http://www.airspacemag.com/…
http://publications.amsus.o…
https://www.newscientist.co…
http://spaceref.com/iss/med…
Certainly more needs to be investigated & developed, as all these were created under the umbrella of being in Earth orbit, but there’s definitely been SOME research into the challenges.
Yet another strong reason to spin the vehicle en-route…using a multi-tether configuration to lighten the structural mass.
There have been numerous articles in the aerospace medicine literature although there is of course little hard data. There have been a couple of medical evacuations from Soviet space stations over the years, neither an emergency per se but crewmen were returned earlier than planned. One Soviet crewman on the Salyute 6 had a kidney stone and was on the verge of being sent back when he passed the stone spontaneously after an injection of atropine. This last incident is described in “Diary of a Cosmonaut”. One of the US crew on Apollo 13 had a serious infection that required treatment after their return.
Or a lunar habitat where things don’t float around, sort of like the surface of Mars. That way if something not thought of happens, they’re only days away instead of months.
Emergencies can happen to anyone. Medevac flying is a relatively dangerous form of aviation anywhere because of the need to fly to unprepared sites in uncertain weather, but this is unquestionably the most demanding medevac run in the world. The reliable Twin Otter is an excellent choice when your life depends on it. However the first winter medevac from deep in Antarctica (though not the pole) was in 1934, by ground vehicles. The man who was rescued was Admiral Richard E. Byrd. It is described in his classic book “Alone”.
Amazing efforts like this highlight some of the baffling paradoxes of our current culture. Consider all the effort and risk put forward to save the lives of two individuals. Apparently, the lives of these individuals hold substantial value to somebody.
The same attitude can be seen (albeit couched inside an emotionally manipulative fictional construct) in how we all cheered along for the protagonist in The Martian when even more (fictional but authentic) substantial resources and risk were put toward the rescue of just one person’s life…and we all snarled at the ‘villains’ who considered that same investment of risk & resources too high a price to be spent for the sake of one person.
And yet, in other instances, lives of some individuals today are considered disposable because they are inconvenient or judged to be ‘not worth living’.
How does one maintain such a paradox inside a single thinking mind and not explode from the contradiction?
I think our society, for various reasons, has twisted itself into an ethical Mobius strip that continues to become more and more tangled. I hope we survive…at least those of us whom society deems worthy of saving.
It’s just what we do, that’s all.
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.
That quote is often, and perhaps incorrectly, attributed to Josef Stalin. But people have said it. I am afraid it does reflect how people react to the news of other people in danger.
The mind is full of conflicts and contradictions. That tension between values is one of the things that makes it such a powerful pattern recognition machine. Powerful, but vulnerable too.