What It’s Like to Be the Only Doctor in Space
Space is no place to be alone. On Earth, it may be uncomfortable, even oppressive—but by itself, being alone isn’t life-threatening. A person alone in space, however, is definitively lost: dead, or about to be.
On simulated Mars—the slopes of a volcano in Hawai’i where I’m helping NASA learn how to plan interplanetary missions—no one is physically alone. We are a six-person crew: a soil scientist, a water specialist, an astrobiologist, an engineer, a space architect, and a doctor—that’s me. Up here, it’s my job to prevent physical and psychological harm. In the process of doing this, it’s become clear that being a space doctor comes with its own risk: that, so far,
