https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/space-childbirth-babies/579064/The myopia is hilarious:
SpaceLife Origin, based in the Netherlands, wants to send a pregnant woman, accompanied by a “trained, world-class medical team,” in a capsule to the space above Earth. The mission would last 24 to 36 hours. Once the woman delivered the child, the capsule would return to the ground. “A carefully prepared and monitored process will reduce all possible risks, similar to Western standards as they exist on Earth for both mother and child,” SpaceLife Origin’s website states. The company has set the year 2024 as the target date for the trip.
2024.
Long before anyone gets off the ground, SpaceLife Origin will face a barrage of questions from regulatory authorities, perhaps even from more than one nation. Commercial space travel is not confined by national borders, and it’s not uncommon for customers in one country to pay the government of another to launch their payloads. SpaceLife Origin’s ambitious mission could include an American woman, in a Japanese capsule, on an Indian rocket, accompanied by a team of doctors from multiple nations.
Because all of India's current rockets are man-rated. And Japan has a legendary history of building manned capsules intended for demanding medical conditions. And all those Indian and Japanese man-rated capsules and rockets are really just Kerbal building blocks and swap back and forth with no consequences. Look at all the Soyuz capsules that flew regularly on Atlas rockets for example. And so many nations have doctors trained and specializing in microgravity biohazard and blood loss. Oh, and are also trained astronauts ready to initiate deorbit procedures (unless all these Japanese manned capsules are spacious enough to have a separate bridge for a command crew and segregated medical bay?).
I think a mission like this would tax the life support systems of the latest generation of US spacecraft (Orion, Dragon and Starliner). Hyperventilating mother in labor, enormous amounts of body heat generated by mother in labor, even a skeleton medical crew would be a doctor and nurse and pilot. You're at 4 people (plus a baby in a bit). While current ECLSS systems are designed for longer durations and larger crews, they are not going through the same accelerated metabolic intensity that a pregnancy crew would be engaging in.
The questions raised about citizenship are delightfully uninformed. Flying on a US craft, you are effectively on US "soil." Same goes for Russian. Or those fancy nonexistent Indian/Japanese man rated craft the author feels a need to posit. It does make for an interesting discussion about nationality of a manned payload when using a booster from a different nation... but I think there's enough precedent with satellites that once the actual spacecraft is deployed (capsule or satellite) it answers to its sponsoring nation rather than the nation of the launch provider. Applying that same logic to manned craft shouldn't be too much of a stretch.
The whole premise throws a nasty wrench in the concept of reusable spacecraft though. Who wants to clean the placenta out of the Dragon capsule after it's had a couple hours to bounce around in microgravity and touch God-only-knows how many surfaces inside the vehicle? Servicing the life support system to be sterile for another situation where bodily fluids and open wounds and cross contamination can happen, when microgravity is also an issue, could be difficult. From what I understand, the ISS is a breeding ground for mold and it has the longest running space life support system in history, with countless docking operations from Russian and US spacecraft, and no systemic sterilization since its deployment. And aside from Space Shuttles (which are sterilized as much as possible before each launch), all Soyuz that have docked there have been new and as sterile as possible. None of those craft have had surgery done in them though.
I'm eager for the discussion of what constitutes a "Martian" with human transplants to said planet, and for humanity to prove it can reproduce elsewhere than Earth. This article is so frustrating though, because this company (company? How will you generate profit off something like this other than scamming space fanbois/gurls out of donation funds for a mission that will never launch?) is so patently a sham that they can't even offer the article's author some realistic launch providers to query for such a mission (Roskosmos, SpaceX, ULA/Boeing/Lockheed are the only 3 names in town for commercial private human rated spaceflight, add the Chinese for the only 4th option... Japan and India? WTF?).
