Human Exploration Is Risky. Get Used To It.
Keith’s note: There has been a lot of discussion of late about risk and safety – COVID-19, launching people on commercial vehicles, etc. There has also been a lot of talk about going back to the Moon too – to pick up the exploration of that world from where we left off half a century ago. The PR pictures are pretty and the videos are inspiring. But the exploits of Apollo still have an alternate reality to them – as if those people were somehow different than we are. In the end, human exploration is inherently risky. It was then. It is now. It will be in the future. And the people who set off on these expeditions to other worlds need to be prepared for things you can’t easily prepare for. In Pat Rawlings iconic painting this injured lunar explorer just happened to have an ambulance nearby with two EMTs. That is not usually the case on expeditions.
Things can happen quickly on an expedition to remote, hazardous locations – even when you think you are safe. On this date, 1 May 2009 Astronaut Scott Parazynski and I were standing next to our tents at Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Before us lay the massive Khumbu icefall and the shoulder of Mt. Everest. Scott was preparing to climb the mountain. I was there to do education and public outreach. I am a space biologist and Scott is a M.D. so we were also doing a little astrobiology field research on the side for a friend at NASA.
Click on images to enlarge
We had a commercial sponsor for our spectrophotometer (our tricorder) so we needed to get some promo shots of it for the company to use. I picked the icefall as a good backdrop to use. We were standing 2 km or so from its edge. It was 11:28:25 am local time. I took a series of pictures of Scott with the spectrophotometer. (see images above) Suddenly we heard a loud cracking/roaring noise and turned toward our left to look at the west side of the icefall. Something was happening. I got off one still photo and then switched my camera to video mode. What unfolded was widely described as the largest avalanche ever recorded on Everest. I did not plan for this. It just happened.
Luckily no one was killed. Alas, a week later, while Scott was climbing on the icefall a similar avalanche from the same location happened. I did not know what his status was for half an hour. Scott’s climbing partner might have been killed had it not been for some quick thinking by his sherpa. In the middle of the area hit hardest by the avalanche a western climber was pulled out of a crevasse. His sherpa was not so lucky. I just happened to record that too. My footage has been used on multiple TV shows and the feature film “Sherpa.” Until 2015 when some more graphic footage of another avalanche made news after a massive earthquake my video had an unfortunate notoriety to it. No more.
In 2009 Scott and I were standing where our outfitter had set up camp amidst the small temporary nomadic village of a thousand people at the foot of the Khumbu Icefall. Everyone thought this to be a safe place since the constant avalanches (you hear smaller ones constantly day and night) never reach this location. At one point Scott and I took some promotional shots for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education (we were both on the board of directors). Again, we did so in front of our tents.
In 2015 as I analyzed where the fatal avalanche came from I was shocked to learn that it was a hanging piece of snow between two peaks that let lose. Had we been in the same location by our tents we’d have stood an excellent chance of being killed. Again – the experts all thought this was a safe location in 2009. Things change. People camp elsewhere now.
Expeditions to other worlds are going to need to be prepared to adapt to dangers like this – both the obvious ones and the unexpected ones. NASA needs to start working on a broader expeditionary mindset wherein the agency – and the public – are taught to better understand the risks as well as the benefits – of human exploration.
You can read more about our Everest adventures at “My Star Trek Episode at Everest“.
I recall reading that hundreds of people die each year while visiting National Parks so even vacations are dangerous.
Yea they can be.
Yes, although some of those deaths in National Parks are preventable and involve people doing stupid things. (I’ve seen “Do not pester the bison” signs…) But I think an important comparison is death rates from people doing perfectly ordinary, every day things. How many people are killed simply commuting to work? I don’t see much discussion of how the risks for an astronaut (or a terrestrial explorer) compare to that. In practice, just about anything anyone does caries some risk, and some risk of dying. So I’m not comfortable with people who just say, “but that astronaut might die”; it’s a statement without context.
And, while I’m at it, the risks of radiation to an astronaut on the way to Mars are often discussed. And how the “acceptable” risk could be exceeded in one trip. But that “acceptable” risk was set in the 1970s (or early 80s) by the career risk of death to people in “high risk” terrestrial professions. E.g. firefighters. In context, an astronaut exceeding the career dose is running a higher risk of work-related death (primarily from cancer in later life) than a fireman in 1980. Ok. So being an astronaut and going to Mars (or the Moon, or even low Earth orbit) is more dangerous than being a fireman. And? I don’t think that makes it automatically unacceptable. But, without the context, it can sound that way.
Exploration requires careful planning, including planning for contingencies and emergencies. After that…sometimes it is just pure luck that makes the difference! I know of one family that was visiting a very ill member of the family. As he seemed to be stable, they booked airline tickets for the next day. But during the night, the family member passed away, necessitating a change in reservations. The plane the family was scheduled to fly on crashed, killing all on board! Sometimes, in spite of all we can do and plan, destiny or karma takes over.
What the general public has to understand is that exploration will entail risks, and there will, as there has been, casualties. What must happen is to find out what went wrong, fix it, and PRESS ON!
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! AD ASTRA!
I didn’t actually understand the seriousness of that video until about 0;55, which is when I realized those orange dots in the foreground were tents. But still the foreshortening is deceiving; a line of people moving right to left and between the tents and the approaching snow, for instance, isn’t apparent without concentration. They look like ants!
Which leads to a few practical questions, like the distance from the camera to the fast-approaching now field; there’s nothing for the uneducated observer to estimate? I’ve read that avalanches are frequently very, very fast as well.
And finally, I can’t help wonder how a sensibly flat tent floor is obstructed in such a rock field!
The pulverized snow reached us a minute later. It was a fine dust. As for our tent floors they changed slowly from day to day since we were sleeping on a moving glacier. You can hear it move at night.Over time your body heat creates an indentation. When we broke camp a month later there was a large rock pointing straight up through the floor of Scott’s tent.