I've always thought that if I had my own spaceship or space station-- at least until or unless artificial gravity is invented-- I would prefer (all else being equal) to hire crew who had no legs.
In such an environment legs seem like trouble. They just fly around knocking into things and taking up space. Sure, you can use legs/feet to anchor a person in place by strapping them in, but there are space-saving ways to anchor a person in place when you don't have to take those useless (in microgravity, at least) appendages into account.
I think all the government space-access prevention agencies, like NASA, have missed a great opportunity by not encouraging the legless to apply. Just think of the public relations coup (assuming no "flight anomaly" resulting in crew loss).
It's a blind spot I hope liberated market spaceflight will notice and fix.
Kent; Not to put too fine a point on the subject- that very observation was made years ago in the movie "Gattaca".
ReplyDeleteI've never seen that movie, but I've observed before that any good idea has been thought many times.
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