The ethics of bearing and raising children in micro-gravity

[Michael Bickford]

For the past month or so I have been posing to space scientists, entrepreneurs, and one astronaut what I believe is a key ethics question regarding space exploration and colonization, but have received no answers. So I’m posing it to this forum. This is a paraphrasing of what I have been putting in my as yet unanswered emails:

As a science educator and writer, I have been keenly interested in space exploration and colonization since I got up before dawn as a nine-year-old to watch Alan Shepard get launched into space.
My specific interest in our current efforts and near-future plans in space have to do with a particular ethical position/question I have regarding space exploration and colonization. I would like to know your thoughts on this ethical question as an (astronaut, space entrepreneur, space scientist, especially with your specialized knowledge of human DNA and genetics), and as human beings with your eyes on the skies.
(This section varies with the specific person I’m asking. Here I’m asking you Sci-fi writers.)

As simply as such a complex question can be put, it is this:
Knowing that being born and raised in a gravitational field that is 17% (the moon) to 38% (Mars) of the one in which humans took billions of years to evolve is physically damaging, is it ethical to conceive, bear, and raise children on Mars or on the moon? If done, it would be, by definition, without these children’s consent that their physiology and genetics would be unalterably changed—including genetic changes that could be passed down to future generations, even if such persons chose to go through the arduous (and possibly impossible) task of returning to earth gravity?

Anyone else considered this question in their writing? Any thoughts on why I’m getting no response from those I’ve contacted with this question?
NASA currently has very little on its public websites on sexuality in space, let alone child-bearing, saying only that there has officially been NO sexual activity in any of their spacecrafts or on the ISS as of yet. They are under surveillance 24/7, so this is probably true, but it simply cannot continue to be so.
Missions to Mars will last years. Musk and others are already putting money into colonization—which more than implies human breeding off-planet. Plans are being made in many companies, agencies, and countries. This question and it’s ethical considerations MUST be addressed soon, imo.
What do you Sci-fi writers think?

 

[Droflet]

'officially been NO sexual activity in any of their spacecrafts or on the ISS as of yet.'
I'll get to your question shortly. But first, what???? Who are they trying to kid? If anyone had the chance of zero G sex they would jump at it. Cough, so to speak. To me, it is inconceivable that after all of these decades, no one has, ah, engaged in such activities. Rant ends.

Now to your question. It is one that has never occurred to me to ask, either from a logistical or ethical viewpoint. This might be why you have received such a deafening silence to your correspondence. Is it ethical? Hmm. I would need to do significantly more research into what the corporations and NASA have in mind. Do they plan to build a permanent base? Multigenerational? How big will it be? Enough room to house a hundred families or only a few?
There are those who ponder the same issues on Earth. Oh, good Lord, how many times have I heard from a disgruntled teen the words, 'I didn't ask to be born.' To which my answer (jokingly, of course) is, 'Well, it's not too late to sew you into a sack and drop you in the river.' Some people believe that the creation of sentient life is a very serious and even sacred step for any of us to contemplate. I suppose they have a point. Yet, procreation is sewn into our DNA. Even gay people want to have a family. Boy, Michael, I think you've opened up a giant can of worms, with this one.
I've read, probably, hundreds of SF books about colonization and this issue has never been raised. Mentioned in passing, but not in depth. Except for Stranger in a Strange Land. All right then, there a probably a lot more, but ethics, unless I fell asleep during the read, was a minor if not trifling component to the story.
Okay, enough of my babbling on. Bottom line: I don't know. Glad to be of assistance to you. This one's too tough for me to get my meager brain around. Hope you get some replies. Especially from those lying sods at NASA.

 

[Dave]

Anyone else considered this question in their writing? Any thoughts on why I’m getting no response from those I’ve contacted with this question?

So, two questions here. The first, I can't you help with, but I do see parallels with the debates over human cloning and IVF and Mary Helen Warnock wrote much about the ethics of that, and she was an adviser on ethics to the UK government. I expect you are familiar with her books, but if not, that might be a start.

For the second question, I would expect that it isn't something that they have thought about very deeply and so are unwilling to put themselves on the record for you. Scientists are just normal people, not philosophers, so as for most people, they generally think in terms of whether something "is" possible and not much about whether it "should be" possible. There is always a question of "drawing a line" but often that line is crossed before anyone has realised it even existed. I'm thinking here of the quote from Oppenheimer, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds'.

You are entirely correct that it is something that will need to be tackled before we colonise space, but it might be that the question is avoided right until events actually demand it. If we "had" to leave Earth to avoid some catastrophe then there would be no question. If we are doing it for exploration and the advancement of science then that is entirely different, but even so it will be avoided until there is no alternative.

 

[tinkerdan]

With as much as they have worked with studies in trying to determine the effects of space on the human body[remember they employed a set of twins, one staying on the earth while the other spent an extended period in space, just to have data]; I'm fairly certain they have given it a lot of thought, especially considering that they are planning missions to the moon and Mars for extended time. I think the reason they haven't answered yet is because they might not have enough information about such extended exploration and they wisely have decided not to share any speculation they have had.

Understanding that this is much more different than when people built ships and began to explore and try to find out where the ends of he earth were without sailing off the edge...

Back then they didn't consider colonization until the discovered bodies of land out there and eventually came across the new world.

It seems the first 'colonies' will in part be the litmus test for affect--discovering how our bodies might or might not adapt and how much time we can push the limits before a person's body will make it impossible to return and it seems those questions would need answering before any thought about real long term colonization.

However, I think that the notion of a child not having given consent to this is a bit egregious in the sense that they never have had a consent from pre conception to birth. There is just no way to ask the for consent so I think that that's a non issue and overreaching. It would be a lot to ask all participants to be sterilized not too mention perverting the purpose of colonization. Though I would suppose that pre-colonization exploration might include such a mandate while they study this and have some definite parameters to offer the real colonists on the matter.

 

[Michael Bickford]

Thank you for you thoughtful response.
I guess my intent is to push for it to be addressed now—before the damaged bodies and lives of children are the impetus for such a discussion and after-the-tragic-fact decision-making. Teaching kids in non-profits and public schools all my adult life has made me sensitive to adult actions that thoughtlessly—and needlessly—damage children. And I am somewhat relentless if I think I’m right about something ready, and though I’m hoping to be proven wrong here, the biology and the physics are all to familiar to me, so I don’t think I am.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Is saying that there has not 'officially' been any sexual activity the same as saying it hasn't happened unofficially? I'm sure that there are a number of things that have been tried out in zero-grav/space that haven't found their way into official record logs (it can't be serious science stuff 24/7 for them).

I guess from a fictional point of view we've had Superman portrayed as having super powers because of the differing gravity from his home planet of Krypton. But in real life? Presumably the inception/gestation would remain unaltered, but who knows?

My assumption was that colonisation would require facilities to be built on other planets that would correspond with those on Earth; you would assume that children brought up in such surroundings would have a similar physiology to that of those being born on Earth, but until it is put to the test we wouldn't know for sure.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Luna by Ian McDonald might be worth a look at in terms of the changes a lunar basis might have

 

[paranoid marvin]

If it was proven that it was dangerous/harmful to children born or raised away from Earth, it would make the whole concept of colonisation (other than for scientific/industrial purposes) impractical and unethical. The whole point of families procreating and increasing/renewing the population of a planet is central to concept of colonisation.

But as I mentioned above, unless Earth-like conditions can be replicated in constructions built on other planets, colonisation will never be practical. The real issue is if we find another planet that has liveable conditions without the need for residing inside pressurised environments.

But from a personal point of view, I cannot see any possibility of 'normal' human habitation off-Earth anytime in the forseeable future.

 

[Michael Bickford]

SO nice to get some responses on this.
Thank you!

Yeah, I hear you on “no sex in space yet” from NASA, but when you think of the situation up there, I think there are physical, logistical, emotional, and, most glaringly privacy issues that are huge obstacles to intimacy. Oh, sure our heroic space gals a guys have undoubtedly (but subtly) jerked off in their zero-g sleeping bags, but actual sex would be videoed, listened to, and had it’s biotelemetry recorded in real time. They are NEVER completely un-surveilled when they are up there. So, I’m thinking, unless there have been some pretty calculated efforts that have remained completely secret, that NASA is pretty much correct.

I know there are similar-seeming issues with sexuality and raising kids here on earth that go back millennia, but when we enter this new environment we are entering territory that is more fundamentally different than any we have entered before As a species, and as examples of life on earth itself. There is NO historic president.

As an analogy, think of conducting experiments with children’s growth and development here on earth. A proposal for even experiments that could yield valuable data, such as how children develop speech, or disease immunity, would be summarily rejected if they involved possible damage of any kind to the children studied. It is a long-standing “difficulty” in research into child development and other psych and bio areas that you can’t just study human children like you can, say, volunteering adult prisoners—and that, too, is ethically fraught. So-called “Wild Child” studies have yielded tons of useful data over the years, and you can bet many behavioral scientists would love to duplicate such studies (secretly, they’d never say it out loud), but you just can’t! You must wait for someone to deprive a child of key nurturing elements criminally in order to observe and learn from the consequences. Think of the accidental discoveries famously made when Alexis St. Martin‘s stomach was left open for observation. Yet we can’t do such invasive studies even with consenting adults. And children are even more off-limits!

Yet, unless this issue is raised soon, we seem to be actively planning to conceive, bear, and raise children in micro-gravity that we KNOW is damaging. If people are even living on Mars in shifts of a few years duration this will happen unless extraordinary controls are in place. LOTS of women get pregnant during their stints in military service of two to four years.

I‘ve read the twin studies involving Mark and Scott Kelly and the details are chilling. In the course of only one year In zero g, Scott’s telomeres on the ends of his chromosomes deteriorated to the point where they feared he had suffered permanent genetic damage. His recovery—after being born and raised at 1 g—was difficult and tenuous. They still aren’t certain that he won’t suffer problems as he ages. Think of the damage had he been born and raised there!

OK, so I’m on this campaign and I’ll cool out for a moment.
I am so very happy and appreciative to have smart, thoughtful people to talk with about this.
Thank you!
Artists are leading the way, as usual!
Write on!

 

[Michael Bickford]

Thanks for the response.

Good reference suggestion! I'll give that a look.
And an apt quote from Oppie. He had the pressure WWII on him to not to consider—aloud, at least—the moral consequences of what he and his team were doing until the deed was before them suddenly and with dramatic finality. I fear that the damage and dire consequences what humanity is doing now will be felt, at first, only as a trickle of damaged individuals for whom it will be too late. There is nothing yet nearly as compelling as a world war pushing micro-gravity colonization—we are not abandoning the earth-ship yet—so I think some insistent questioning now and some organizing around this question may save lives in the future.
The sub-text of what I am asking is why we need social colonization of Mars and the moon when robotics can exploit the resources more efficiently and obviate this difficult question. With evolving gravity-simulating technologies for large structures in zero-g space, we can have the advantages of off-earth emigration and colonization without these new, potentially disastrous ethical and bio-genetic difficulties. We, as a species, just have to decide what our future will be instead of just letting it happen according to the profit and ego-driven dreams of the few.

 

[Michael Bickford]

It's not serious science 24/7, but they are under surveillance 24/7. I'm imagining two astronauts trying to get in a secret quickie in the zero-g toilet, and I am not convinced even that has happened. And even if some hanky-panky has slipped under the radar, or that NASA and JPL monitors have "looked away" as two astronauts have committed the forbidden act (and it is official forbidden) before the mics and cameras, say, in the dark, that does not alter the main question I'm asking. The fact that we can't stop astronauts from having sex even when it is difficult and unauthorized makes it seem even more obvious that if we colonize micro-gravity environments under normalized human social conditions that we will have to deal with the ethics of subjecting children to the consequences of our actions. So it needs careful consideration and planning now.

 

[Michael Bickford]

Luna by Ian McDonald might be worth a look at in terms of the changes a lunar basis might have

 

[Michael Bickford]

Luna by Ian McDonald might be worth a look at in terms of the changes a lunar basis might have

Noted! Thanks.
Leave it to SCI-fi writers to address the hard issues!

 

[Michael Bickford]

Thank you for the response!

The proof of micro-gravity damage is already out there in the NASA files. See the Kelly twins study.

And, yes, not socially colonizing Mars, the moon, or any other micro-gravity environment is what I'm advocating. Use robotics only to exploit their resources.

It is also not a consideration within the foreseeable future—the next few hundred years, imo—that we have some now-unknown, distant alt-earth to colonize that will have the same gravitational conditions we have evolved in. In fact, my opinion of that whole line of thought is that those locations are too distant to be of any relevance to our social and biological evolution for possibly many millennia, if ever.

Plans for large structures that will simulate 1 g are already being invested in and tested by such companies as Orbital Assemblies. This is the direction of off-world emigration I am suggesting for ethical reasons and for the long-term genetic health of our species.

Send your doubts to the likes of Musk and the people, companies, and government agencies of several nations who are already planning on colonizing the moon and Mars. I think they will overcome the difficulties, but create new ones. Those are what I'm trying to bring up for discussion.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Is it ethical to conceive, bear, and raise children on Mars or on the moon?

It seems a little premature to ask the question now when we're only just beginning to learn about the effects of long-term exposure to the conditions in space. Asking whether it's ethical presumes we have clearly defined arguments that are both for and against - but so far as I'm aware neither is currently being developed.

In which case, are you asking these questions simply because you want an audience for them, or are you writing this into a story (we are a science fiction and fantasy community after all).

 

[.matthew.]

It seems to me that these same questions can be asked of many people on Earth. We don't (as a general rule) forcibly sterilise or prohibit anyone from having children. Even many incarcerated criminals can arrange for their sperm to be taken to spouses in the outside world - not sure about women's prisons but I suspect there would be a way there too.

We also allow children to be born with crippling genetic illnesses and allow those who are almost certain to pass them on to do so at their discretion. Same with poverty. I see no fundamental difference in that than in allowing space colonists to do so.

Also remember that colonisation has always been a dangerous endeavour and had such safeguards for unborn children existed then, the world would be a vastly different place today.

It is a risk (almost a certainty) but great achievement almost always comes with a great cost in human lives and suffering.

Overall, I'd say it would be more unethical to interfere at all.

 

[Saiyali]

Just on the matter of ISS staff being err found out, don't they they have their biometrics being monitored continuously? IMO sexual activity would be pretty obvious with live feeds of pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate and skin temperature...

On a personal note, I'm not sure how horny I'd necessarily feel, inside a tiny bubble of air, floating in the vacuum of space.

 

[tinkerdan]

All of the below:

Just on the matter of ISS staff being err found out, don't they they have their biometrics being monitored continuously? IMO sexual activity would be pretty obvious with live feeds of pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate and skin temperature...

On a personal note, I'm not sure how horny I'd necessarily feel, inside a tiny bubble of air, floating in the vacuum of space.

Could be better than an aphrodisiac for some people.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The question of sex in space is a distraction - the opening post is about raising kids in low-g environments. But I don't think there's any serious argument that we should be doing this at the moment, especially with the limited understanding we have on the effects on human biology in general in those environments.

 

[Saiyali]

I think The Expanse has a reasonably astute take, in that Belters become very much second-class people in part because they can't live in full planetary gravity. They develop new, zero-g physiologies that make them stand out wherever they are. In those stories, racism seems obsolete, but this physiology becomes a new marker for discrimination and exploitation. Depressingly, this is where I believe it would lead in reality. And quickly, no more than a few generations.