Bernard Harris: I believe that as human beings we're always
explorers. We're always looking over the next horizon. Well,
when people find out then that I'm an astronaut, you know, and
a pilot, they say, "Boy, you, you must really like risk. You
must be comfortable with risk." And I said, I describe myself as
a person who takes calculated risks. I'm not a bungee jumper.
I don't like to jump out of, you know, a perfectly good aircraft
unless I absolutely have to. You know, so there are people who
are like that. I'm not one of those folks.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: This is Bernard Anthony Harris Jr. He
was the first African American to complete a space walk.
Bernard Harris: Visualize yourself in this suit, this
bulky suit in a small chamber. You open up the hatch. Of
course, your heart rate goes up a little bit, but this is
something that you're trained for all your life. And, the
hatch was facing toward the earth, so immediately I felt
like I was falling, and the only way I can describe it is if
you've ever been in the country and have walked up to a well and
looked over in the well and saw how deep, that's what it felt
like.
The other thing is that not only was the earth down below me in
the sense that I was falling, there was this great sense of
movement. We're going around the earth at 17,500 miles an hour.
That's pretty darn fast, around the entire earth in 90 minutes.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: I'm Lauren Arora Hutchinson. I am
the director of the iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman
Institute of Bioethics. I've spent years working on stories
where medicine and science show up in people's everyday lives.
I can't imagine going 17,000 miles per hour. I can't imagine
going into space, but for folks like Bernard, it's a risk
they're willing to take. But I do have a son who'd love to go,
and I don't know... As a mother, I can't imagine him going into
space, and strangely, this little observation in my life
seems to speak to a larger societal question we're about to
confront. As we prepare to send people not just to the moon, but
to Mars and beyond, what is the level of risk we're willing to
accept for our metaphorical sons and daughters? Or to put it more
simply, in something as risky as space travel, who gets to decide
what's too risky? This is playing god?
Bernard Harris: When I was about six-seven years old, my parents
divorced. My mother had a college degree, so she had
options. The option that she executed was to get her family
out of this inner city environment in Houston, Texas,
to the Navajo Nation, but the whole point is that I was taken
out of that constrictive environment to this environment
of Grand Canyons and painted deserts and infinite
possibilities.
And, one of those possibilities really was symbolized by me as a
kid watching the night skies, and I can't tell you how
beautiful the night skies are in that neck of the room, there's
no light pollution that prevents it. You don't need a telescope
and all that. So, I was inspired by those guys, and at the same
time watching the space program develop before my eyes, and so
in 1969 when Neil and Buzz landed on the moon and said
those wonderful words, I was, you know, just blown away by the
possibility that I could follow in their footsteps, and it was,
it was incredible.
I came into NASA about a year or so after the Challenger
accident, and I remember what my family and friends and media
would would talk about that, and you're joining the astronaut
corps, and you know, didn't you see just what happened? And...
and I simply believe this, that I would rather live your or die
doing something that I love doing and accomplishing a dream
than to live in fear, so that's that's my, my way of thinking
about
I think the spacewalk is symbolic of life in a sense. So
you spend your entire life chasing a dream, getting all the
tools and the skills necessary to accomplish that dream, the
last thing to make that dream happen is that step, right? It's
that step of faith that everything that you have done in
the past is going to allow you to successfully take that first
step, that gigantic step. That step for not only mankind, but
for you as an individual.
JD Polk: I'm Dr. J.D. Polk. I'm the Chief Health and Medical
Officer of NASA.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: JD Polk is responsible for the health
and safety of astronauts as they prepare for and experience the
harsh environments of space.
JD Polk: You know, certainly, most astronauts want to fly. So
that's that's probably one of the push pulls we have as flight
surgeons at NASA is you work for two masters.
You're serving the patient, but you're also serving the agency
and looking out for the risks of both, and sometimes they are
incongruent, where someone may be willing to take that risk,
but the agency is not, or vice versa. The agency itself, I have
seen, is not afraid of risk, but they go about risk in a very
strategic, methodical, and objective way.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: But as we start traveling further and
further from Earth, this gets more and more complicated...
JD Polk: You know, we've, we've been a little, I guess sheltered
in our space flight, and that we have gotten to the moon, but
we've always been within three days of the Earth. Apollo 13 is
a great example. Something went wrong with the spacecraft, we
were able to get the astronauts back through a lot of heroics
from Mission Control and the astronauts themselves, and if
something went wrong on the International Space Station, we
could get the astronauts back very quickly, but you know when
you, when you go to another planet, Mars and Earth don't
line up again for another 18 or so months, and so you take on a
different level of risk.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: And not only is where we're going
changing, but who is going.
Bernard Harris: We're going to have different types of folks
who are doing different things, who are quote unquote
astronauts, and they will be doing it for different reasons
and different objectives than what we have now.
So, some of those will be for the good of all mankind, some of
those will be the good for the company objective, some of those
will be just experiencing microgravity, and what's that
light, and space, and space exploration is that next horizon
for humans on this earth. We're going to be living in orbital
platforms around the earth. We're going to be living on the
moon, and we're going to go to Mars.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: And for all these different reasons, to
go into space is the same level of risk acceptable for everyone?
Bernard Harris: It's a, it's-it's a complicated question
that has a complicated answer to it.
JD Polk: But there's always the risk of the unknown, right? I
think probably the most difficult problems we have are
the unknown unknowns, when something is operating outside
the specs that it was designed to do, and you wonder, okay,
where's how much margin do I have here. We think we have
comfort, and we think we have data, but do we have enough?
Jeffrey Kahn: NASA is an exploration agency, and there's
nothing else like that in the federal government.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: That's Professor Jeffrey Kahn, our
resident bioethics expert, who also has served as advisor to
NASA on the ethics of human space flight.
Jeffrey Kahn: They have this funny combination of go and go
beyond and go safely, but also you know they're doing it with
the money of the taxpayers of this country, so they have to do
it in a way that's responsible and responsive to the
expectations of society.
Bernard Harris: Those early explorers set the stage for what
we're doing now. I'm excited about what's happening in space.
We're going to have different types of astronauts doing
different things. We're going to have those professional
astronauts going to be the ones that are going to pave the way
to the moon and pave the way to Mars.
Those are going to be followed by astronauts that will be
living, not just explorers, but be living and working in space,
and so this whole ecosystem that is going to develop in low Earth
orbit, moon and Mars, is going to result in this tremendous
advancement in knowledge, this tremendous intellectual capacity
as human beings, as we explore the galaxy. Will also provide
some psychological and sociological challenges for us
as we embark on this new frontier, but you know we're
going to do it.
There's there is no doubt in my mind that this is where we're
headed. This new era, this new industrial revolution that's
going to occur is going to be on the backs of men and women who
seek to explore the unknown.
Jeffrey Kahn: NASA is a US government agency that's
spending our money as taxpayers to send humans out into space,
and there's a responsibility in their doing that when the goal
of it is to help advance societal goals that they need to
do it in a way that's not just, you know, engineered in the best
possible way, but that respects ethics principles in terms of
the health and safety of the astronauts as well.
So they see it as a responsibility really on the
part of the agency to take care of the people that they put in
harm's way for benefits that are accruing to society as a whole.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: As we go further and deeper into space
on longer exploration missions, we have to start thinking
differently about risk.
Bernard Harris: When you're in low Earth orbit, you know it's
just a millisecond or so latency versus the 20 minutes from ours,
and so if there are any issues, particularly medical problems,
we can immediately call back down to Mission Control, they
can connect us to a specialist that can help us resolve our
problem, and it's almost done real time.
In addition, if there are any serious illnesses, then we can
immediately deorbit and come back within hours, which is
something we can't do if we go to Mars, or even the moon, for
that matter.
JD Polk: If you think about somebody on the space station
today, if they scratch their cornea and it doesn't heal, I'm
not going to make an astronaut sacrifice their left eye for the
space program, and we would bring them down. We'd have them
in a hospital with ophthalmologists to getting
care, but when you go to Mars and the planets don't line up
again for another 18 months, if you scratch your cornea while
you're on the second day of arrival on Mars, you're not
turning around and coming back.
It risks the crew, and you've now put the other people at
risk. It risks the mission. All of those things change to where
now you know the life and limb is subordinate to the mission,
instead of the other way around. And so that's that's one of the
probably the biggest ethical paradigm shifts in exploration
missions versus low earth orbit and near earth missions like the
moon.
Jeffrey Kahn: It just won't be possible to bring people back or
to send a crew to help in time, and that's a different ethics
calculation, as well as a different kind of just
understanding of mission. And so, that's just part of the
conversation that the agency is is having, and first and
foremost, that the crew understands that that's what
they're accepting as a function of going on these missions, and
second that the American people appreciate that that's the level
of commitment and risk that the crew is accepting, that NASA is
asking the crew to accept, and the American people have to be
willing to understand that there will be untoward events, and
there could be fatalities, and people lost on missions, and
that has to be an acceptable thing for us as a, as a people.
Bernard Harris: So, there does need to be a level of autonomy
for the crews, and one of the things that I think is
important, and that is that we will go from this ability to
provide immediate services and feedback and advice and counsel
to this: how do we support the crew to make their own decisions
while they're there?
Jeffrey Kahn: So, the crews will have to make decisions in ways
that are not as supported by the many, many people on the ground
that otherwise support every mission, and there's some talk
about trying to aid that decision making with artificial
intelligence, but at the end of the day, it will be crews
deciding about what should happen in real time in a much
more kind of isolated, you're on your own kind of way, which is a
different kind of a different ethics commitment on the part of
the crew and the members of the crew and the part of the agency
to accept that.
It's like you know you can do certain things when you're
tethered and you feel much safer about it. It's a different thing
if you're jetting around in space without a tether attached
to the space station, it feels kind of like that level of
difference. We're kind of on our own. We'll have to manage
whatever comes.
JD Polk: It's not just a vested interest to make sure that the
nation succeeds, or that NASA succeeds, but it's personal. You
want to make sure Butch and Sonny come home safely. I think
that part, the humanizing of that risk, is something that's
important, and I think it's something that the agency does
fairly well.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: We asked astronaut Bernard Harris
if he would sign up for a mission to Mars.
Bernard Harris: I, you know, I would. I would certainly like
that opportunity at some point in time. I joke and say to folks
that I would jump on immediately if we were going to the
it's close since I can go and come back, but if going to Mars,
you know, it is a three year trip, at least a three year
trip.
So, do I want to do that at this age, or would I wait till later?
And so my joke is that when I turn 80, I'll go to Mars. I'll
be one of those octogenarians who will volunteer to go to
Mars, because I won't care whether I come back or not, and
I advance, of course, human exploration further.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Advancing human exploration further is a
drive that shaped human history, and one that has always come
with risk. For adventurers like Bernard, and those who will
follow him, the rewards of space travel are being at the
forefront of new discoveries are worth the risk, but for NASA,
astronauts and all of us left back down on Earth, how do we
grapple with the risks of sending someone into space
without the option of help, if things go wrong? Who gets to
make that decision? What new discoveries are worth risking
human lives?
Would you be scared of going into space?
Child: I don't know.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Would you want to go as far as Mars?
Child: Yeah.
Child: Because I wanna see above space 'cause it, it could be
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Why?
cool.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Yeah, does it feel. do you think it
would feel risky?
Child: Um, I think so.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: But you want to take that risk?
Child: Yeah.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Why?
Child: Because I would see if I could do it.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Yeah?
Child: Yeah.
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Join us next week on a special two-part
episode of playing god?
Guests: If you had cancer that ran in the family, would you
have a child? Put yourself in a position like that, what would
you do?
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Where we meet a couple who became
accidental pioneers of genetic medicine...
Guests: And I said, "Oh my God, you came into this world like
loud, you just made sure that you are here," like...
Lauren Arora Hutchinson: Many thanks to our guests in this
episode. To Bernard Harris for sharing his story with us, and
to Jeffrey Kahn and JD Polk. playing god? is a production of
the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab at the Johns Hopkins Berman
Institute of Bioethics, made in association with Sea Salt and
Mango Productions. This episode was produced by Lauren Arora
Hutchinson and Aaron Henkin, with help from Lyric Bowditch,
Brian Ricker, Amelia Hood, and Mrigaanka Sharma. Our executive
editor is Tony Phillips. Music and sound design by Alexander
Overington. iDeas Lab producer, Lyric Bowditch. Researcher,
Brian Ricker. Story editor, Simon Adler. Show art, Barry
Pousman and Shawn Carney. Our production coordinators are Leah
Lord and Susan Snead. Our executive producers are Jeffrey
Kahn and Anna Mastroianni. I'm Lauren Arora Hutchinson, host
and managing editor. Come back next week for more playing god?