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Comment by j-pb | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure there are enough people that voluntarily give up their medical privacy AND want to go to space.

If you don't want to disclose your medical record, fine. But don't expect others to funnel billions into you just to make your dream of going to space come true.

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Maybe they can do so voluntarily. If you exclude people from the program because they're not bending to the will of "my tax dollars" arguments you'll assuredly lose out on talented people in a small specialization pool.

My understanding is that there are literally hundreds of qualified, passionate applicants for each spot. I've met a few. If we are spending billions of dollars to strap that particular person to a rocket, I think humanity should be able to benefit as much as possible. I don't think its unreasonable to have as a requirement for that service that certain health records might not remain private. Just like it would not be unreasonable to require certain high level public servants to divulge their tax records, as long as it was understood as a requirement beforehand.

The problem is not, if we have enough applicants. It's did THESE people agree to it. If not, it's wrong to disclose this data publicly without their consent. This is an example of better to ask permission, not forgiveness.

Combined with the notion that I'm sure the paper will be anonmised and re-released. I'd even bet this is a non-issue. (Assuming the assertions previously made in this thread of course).

I fully agree with your first sentence but I don't think the amount of people who want to go to space is a good measurement here, since most would not qualify for the job anyway.

So with all due respect, to me that means your second sentence may well be replaced by "If you want to make the disclosure of medical records a requisite to be an astronaut, don't expect too many qualified applicants to show up for the job".

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