[extropy-chat] Are dwarfs better for long duration spaceflight?

[Mike Lorrey]

Dwarfs are Spike's favorite sort of astronaut, particularly legless
female dwarfs.

SF writer Merideth Baxter Bujold proposed genetically engineering
people with arms in place of legs for zero g living in her novel
"Falling Free", in which a group of kids are engineered by a space
corporation in solar orbit until artificial gravity is invented, so
they are thus obsolete. The corp has plans to eliminate the kids, so
instead they take control of their space station and fly it off (using
the gravity control technology as a space drive, AFAIKR) into
interstellar space. Descendants appear in later episodes of the Miles
Vorkosigan series.

--- "kevinfreels.com" <kevin at kevinfreels.com> wrote:

> 
> Has there been any real serious thought to the idea of operating our
> entire manned space program with midgets (or people with dwarfism, or
> little people, or whatever word you prefer to think of as less
> offensive since my intention is not to offend)? 
> 
> I know some will think I am joking or be put off by the idea, but I
> am completely serious. I was thinking the other night about how we
> would first begin to alter ourselves to make ourselves more fit for
> space travel and the first thing that came to mind was to reduce the
> plumbing, life-support, and livable space requirements. One way to do
> that would be to engineer people to be much smaller than normal. Then
> it dawned on me that we already have fully capable miniature humans
> among us and there is no need for such an ambitious plan. Half-size
> humans would greatly reduce all the living requirements for people on
> long duration space missions and would therefore reduce the cost and
> launch weight as well, wouldn't it?
> 
> The more I thought about it, the more I realized that midgets may
> very well be the perfect human astronaut - or as close as we can get
> naturally. I am left to wonder if their compact size would make them
> less succeptable to the effects of long duration spaceflight. Also,
> they could probably move around better in zero-G without those long
> dangly limbs. 
> 
> I know that the required height in the US program is 64-76 inches. At
> 62 inches even I am too short to be a shuttle commander. I am sure
> the reason is that the entire shuttle was designed around people of
> that height. A payload specialist requirements are a bit more
> generous with a minimum of 58 inches, but why is that minimum still
> so tall? Is it simply because of the design of the couches and
> harnesses? 
> 
> Maybe NASA is afraid to propose such a thing. Are they afraid to
> offend? I would think it would be an honor. Many midgets have trouble
> getting jobs because of discrimination. They aren't even protected in
> the constitution - it doesn;t say "race, religion, color, creed, sex,
> or height". 
> 
> Have midgets been simply overlooked? Maybe they have been
> discriminated against because of their small size despite the fact
> that they would be better for the job? This could be because of the
> original public-relations strategy used by the US government early in
> the space program which has carried over to today. John Glen was
> 5'10" and I am sure the rest of the original Mercury 7 were close to
> 6 ft as well.
> 
> Or am I wrong about the reduced requirements?  Is there no
> substantial savings by launching 3 foot humans over 6 foot humans?
> Are their air.water/food requirements the same as an average height
> human being? I can find very little information about this. I did
> find an interesting article about the etymology of the words "dwarf"
> and "midget" here:
> http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2005/bigenough/special_dwarfism_ety.html.
> But I can find very little reliable information regarding the issues
> that would make the real difference in space travel. One thing I did
> note was that the word "modget" turns up a lot of derogatory
> information and the words "dwarf" "dwarfs" and "dwarfism" turn up a
> lot of sci-fi/fantasy info. Neither gives much good information.
> 
> So if anyone has some decent links for informatoin on this topic,
> please share it. I am also interested in your comments. Am I justway
> off here, or is this something we should take a serious look at?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat
> 


Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com