Astronauts who die during Mars mission could be buried on the Red Planet, sent into eternal orbit around its atmosphere - or EATEN by other crew members

dailymail.co.uk ^ | By STACY LIBERATORE

[BenLurkin]

Experts have suggested a number of ways to dispose the body, including 'jettison' it into the dark abyss or burying the person on Mars – but the remains would first need to be burned to not contaminate the surface.

However, a worst case scenario has been presented where the space fairing heroes run out of food and the only thing edible is the dead body of their fallen crew mate.

NASA does not have set protocols for dealing with death in space, but researchers around the world have put the work in to respectfully dispose of a fallen astronaut, as reported on by Popular Science.

If a crew member dies while making the more than 170-million-mile journey to Mars, the body can be placed in the cold storage or freeze dried until the craft touches down.

Releasing the body into space seems like the easiest option, it would become trapped in the path of the craft and linger exactly where it was let go.

And if numerous missions choose this method, future rockets heading to Mars will soar through a sea of dead bodies.

NASA has strict laws about contaminating other planets with Earth microbes.

'Regarding the disposal of organic material (including bodies) on Mars,' NASA's Conley told Popular Science, 'we impose no restrictions so long as all Earth microbes have been killed—so cremation would be necessary.'

However, not every dead astronaut will likely be buried, but otherwise eaten so the others can survive.

It may sound barbaric, but experts are looking to what happened when a plane crashed into the Andes mountains in 1972.

The passengers had no food no way of communicating, so in order to live they made the hard decision to eat those who had died when the plane went down.

[TnTnTn]

If the supplies are so low as to resort to cannibalism, that isn’t going to keep anyone going for long ...so why bother...

[Rebelbase]

Typical Daily Mail headline hype.

[Rebelbase]

Donner party of four, your table is ready.

[BenLurkin]

Gotta love how they use CAPS!!

[Delta 21]

I wonder what, exactly, the other astronauts are going to dine on while they wait around for Karen to finally have that brain bleed?

This is so much bullsh!t.....

[Nateman]

The 3001 novel was not that good. Too many inconsistentcies not matching up with the first book. He should have gone back and re-read his old books to get them to match up.

[frank ballenger]

RE: Clarke’s 3001 novel not good....

To each their own. I liked it.

Best,

F B

[glorgau]

Fava beans as a side dish

[blueplum]

if we can compost people on Earth, why not on Mars?

[A Navy Vet]

"The 3001 novel was not that good."

Probably why I never heard of it nor did anyone make a movie. One of my favorite novels by Clarke is "Childhood's End".

[proust]

Yeah I read it and instantly forgot it, unlike the previous two.

[bravo whiskey]

In the book PACKING FOR MARS by Mary Roach the author recounts seminar with astronauts and scientists. The scientists were talking about recycling urine and solid waste for food. One astronaut shut the discussion down when he stood up and said “I don’t care what you say. We are not eating shitburgers.”

One-line summary: Everything you ever wanted to know about vomiting, sweating, pooping, wanking, and dying in space.

[JD_UTDallas]

All organic matter can be reduced at high enough temperatures to gasses and elemental solids. Without O2 heating a body above 2000 degrees C would break all the double C=C and single C-H bonds of our proteins , lipids and kerogens what you would get in a reducing environment without O2 would be hydrogen gas, solid carbon , CH4 gas, and H2O gas. Our bones are calcium phosphates which in a reducing environment would turn to calcium oxides stripping the O2 from H2O as Ca has more affinity to the O2 than H2 yielding more H2 gas and solid CaO with traces of PO2. Ultimately you would end up with a lot of CO gas, H2 gas, powdered elemental CaO, PO2, Fe in trace amounts also a solid due to red blood cells. At high temps a human would be reduced to basic elements by thermal destruction of the chemical bonds holding the molecules together 2000C would do the job really 1000C would leave a pile of powder but 2000C plus would melt that into a slap like glass and gasses.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

An enormous amount of very scarce energy would be required to do that...energy that is going to be very precious on Mars. Unless nuclear reactors are producing abundant electricity.