AstroAccess is on a mission to make it possible for disabled people to live and work in space:
"I went silent," Dwayne Fernandes told me. "I shut the hell up." Fernandes, a double-amputee since the age of 11, was recounting his experience in weightlessness, having recently participated in a parabolic flight alongside a disabled research crew. The zero-g flight threw him into a deeply contemplative state, and as the crew celebrated its successful mission, he instead felt compelled to put pen to paper and write some poetry.
Speaking to me from his home in Australia, Fernandes told me that "disability is not just a wheelchair—we need to expand that thinking." Disability, he said, is "a condition plus barriers," which for wheelchair users includes barriers such as height or stairs. But gravity can also be a barrier, as he pointed out.
"On that zero-g flight, I had my condition—the condition stayed—but the barrier went," Fernandes explained. "That became a profound, weird feeling that caused me to re-identify myself. The social model of disability says I'm a person with a disability, but my condition changed in a zero-g environment." When in weightlessness, "I am not disabled—I am actually super enabled."
Elaborating on this point, Fernandes described himself as being "compact" and with "upgradeable parts." Legs "get in the way in space," he said, and, as extra weight, they only serve to increase launch costs. "There's no such thing as a spacewalk," he said. "Your feet aren't walking—your feet are just anchored." All he would need to live and work in space, he said, are "a couple of carabiners and some hooks."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by choose another one on Thursday March 09, @10:57AM (1 child)
Yep, the late Prof Stephen Hawking did this years ago, described the event as "true freedom ... I was Superman for those few minutes."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-43430023 [bbc.co.uk]
Hawing had a lot of time to think, because he couldn't do much else. Most things you can think of, he already thought of, most things you can do, he couldn't, but this one, he did.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday March 09, @11:28AM
I can understand his excitement to some extent, however... He visibly still has most of his legs (down to below the knee), he is not paralyzed or confined to a wheelchair. So on Earth he presumably gets around on prosthetics. In space, his legs are just as useful or useless as anyone else's. Weightlessness is likely to be much more freeing for people with much more severe physical disabilities.
Which is great and all, but at the moment space travel is still very expensive. It's hard to see any reason to send disabled people to space to win PC points. If they are good at what they do, that's great, they can be considered along with everyone else.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @11:25AM (7 children)
We are all "disabled" in space, requiring complex life support systems just to survive and move around. Presence or absence of legs in particular is a small difference for human capabilities in zero G.
In the space travel environment there are significant advantages in the reduction of body mass from the removal of large, relatively useless appendages....
I would be willing to bet there's more than one Science Fiction story along those lines.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @12:14PM (1 child)
I remember a character in Footfall where this exact point was made, but it wasn't an important part of the narrative.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 09, @12:50PM
Just watched Mandalorian S3:E2, it wasn't in space but there was a tiny creature with a big eye that inhabited a variety of robot bodies...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @03:28PM (2 children)
> I would be willing to bet there's more than one Science Fiction story along those lines.
And you would win that bet, one of the first might have been:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(short_story) [wikipedia.org]
This was a big shot in the ego for me... (I read it in middle school) and likely other non-jock, nerdy kids everywhere.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @05:00PM (1 child)
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday March 09, @05:01PM
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @07:09PM (1 child)
"Islands in the Sky"
(Score: 1) by toki on Friday March 10, @02:36AM
Not one of his best (the whole 'in' vs. 'on' thing etc) but it was the first thing I thought of too.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday March 09, @10:57PM
This pithy quote [youtu.be] is very applicable as well, when you also consider that someone could become disabled *in* space.
(Score: 2) by r_a_trip on Friday March 10, @10:41AM
Yeah, I don't see this "I am compact in zero G" as an "advantage" for amputees in space for long. Microgravity has debilitating effects on the human body. It won't be long before space stations will have habitats with artificial 1G. Allowing astronauts to live in normal day to day conditions most of the time. Only when a microgravity experiment needs attending, will they move to a non-gravity part of the station.
As far as I can see, we bring brains and hands into space. So there isn't much of a functional difference between a legless and a legged scientist up there.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday March 10, @03:39PM
In fact, I journaled [soylentnews.org] about this a while ago.
Assuming such folks can survive the acceleration associated with escaping Earth's gravity well, there's plenty of opportunity for those who, on Earth, are considered "disabled."
I'm all for it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr