Re: Question : What's more import ?
" ... Particularly those of childbearing age ..."
Yerp, and one of the more important aspects of female biology has been constantly, consistently and hypocritically discriminated against by NASA's bosses for reasons of politics, mainly not offending the deep-pocketed priests who fund the politicians who are on the funding committees.
Nearly sixty years of manned off-world flights and not once have mating, pregnancy and birth been tested for viability during long flights.
Nor have any of them even been tested under low gravity, for example that of the lunar surface.
True, we have all sorts of SF extrapolations on the subject but those are *not* valid data publishable in respected medical journals. We need women to do things in orbit, on the Moon, on Mars and under boost mid-flight.
Just to see whether the human species *can* go interstellar.
It may turn out that Larry Niven's "Confinement Asteroid" is indeed a vital, biologically imperative tool which will forever restrict the expansion of Mankind. If so, we're sort of stuffed.
Or, more likely, biological plasticity may allow for Man to adapt to sex, gestation, birth and child-rearing under free-fall and low-gravity conditions, a power that would make the colonisation of the cosmos far easier than if we can't so adapt.
Does it not behove us to find out?
Making babies is not a tiny, irrelevant, mucky little bit of biology humans can hide away if they want to become ubiquitous and eternal. It is the one thing that prevents extinction. It is *important*. It is, indeed, essential to the continued existence of the species.
It's something NASA should be testing. Lots.
Yes, maybe with cats and chimps first but humans need to "do it", too.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
