• Question: What happens when you die in space?

    Asked by 11P SHS to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 14 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 14 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Hi!
      As for when you die on Earth, this is nothing good! 😉
      Luckily we don’t have a lot of experience with it.

      As a matter of facts, all the space casualties that happened so far where somehow related to either the launch to space or the reentry when the mission was over. These are the most critical moments, because the big Earth gravity and the thick atmosphere are a big problem when you want to travel at 10 thousands miles per hour…
      So far, no astronaut ever died “in space”, and we do our best every day so that this won’t change 😉

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 15 Oct 2015:

      Hey 11P SHS!!

      As Sergio says fortunately we haven’t had this experience while astronauts have been in space and hopefully we wont in the future! There are extensive safety protocols in place to help keep Astronauts like Tim safe, and so far have worked well. Unfortunately problems have occurred on launch and re-entry.

      If an astronaut does have a medical problem while they are on the ISS it is possible to evacuate them back to early quickly. This is different to here in in Antarctica where we have no opportunity of evacuation, even in case of emergency for 9 months. This is because the temperatures are too low for planes to fly to come and get us during the winter months!

      If we are going to think about travelling further in space, e.g. Mars then we will have to change our medical protocols and provisions for astronauts accordingly (as we won’t be able to evacuate them as is currently possible on the ISS). This is one of the reasons that Concordia is such a useful place to do research as the medical provisions we provide here will be similar to those needed on a long duration spaceflight mission.

      Here at Concordia we have a hospital, operating theater, 2 medical doctors and really good telemedicine facilities (so we can video call specialist doctors back home for advice)

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