Final Frontier Tests Terra Firma Ethics

As NASA plans a three-year manned mission to Mars during the next three decades, Oregon Trail ethics are being updated. What do you do with bodies of pioneers who don't make it? A new document on crew health from the space agency deals with death and interment where no man has gone before.

The report considers euthanasia for critically ill astronauts who are draining precious resources, and even an illegal form of genetic screening to lower the risk. How to manage cosmonauts' libidos was a subject too taboo for the paper, though it's one that's ultimately "going to have to be made about mixed-sex crews," a bioethicist says. (More space exploration stories.)