I think it's important to point out that these illustrations were part of a longer history. Galileo first observed the craters on the Moon in the 1600s. By the end of the 1700s, Schröter measured lunar elevations and determined that "the amount of material around a crater ... is exactly equal to the amount that it would take to fill the crater up again" - https://www.univie.ac.at/geochemistry/koeberl/publikation_list/189-lunar-craters-history-EMP2001.pdf though he thought the rim was due to trees. (BTW, Wikipedia says Schröter was the first to call them craters.) That link includes a 1873 illustration of what the view of the Moon's surface, looking towards the Earth, might look like. It's very similar to Bittinger's 2nd image shown here. The lunar craters have rims, and a central peak. It even has a similar view of Earth, with South America prominent in both images.
Sweden and Norway are also take-off-shoes-in-the-house countries. Though the linked-to article does say "for the average household, shoe bacteria don't pose an immediate risk", so it's unlikely that that's the reason.
Minor complaint: the article mentions there are more germs than "even the surface of a toilet". Every (pop science) article I've seen on the topic says that the surface of a toilet is one of the most sanitary places in the house. So not a good comparison.
Death rates based on vehicle failure are only part of the overall risk. What's the effect of 3gs during launch or the 9gs for an abort (the Blonsky device hasn't been used, though the patent proposes that 8gs be the high end)? Rats born in space have an underdeveloped vestibular system. What of humans? Can an epidural be administered in microgravity? How are bodily fluids handled? Is the air composition appropriate for newborns? There is much to work out first. But yeah, figuring 70 years for the youngest of readers, there's a chance.
I agree that things can be "less than straightforward". This does not appear to be anywhere near one of those cases. The justifications for doing it in the timeframe given seems to be 1) bragging rights, and 2) "if we don't do it, someone else will". If we accept those as valid guidelines than we justify almost any sort of medical experimentation. I see no way that this experiment can be ethical or moral under modern practices.
Outsourcing medical trials to impoverished countries can be exploitative. The basic principle from the Declaration of Helsinki is that the "subject's welfare must always take precedence over the interests of science and society." The medical staff at the launch site, once the woman is there, should stop the experiment because the woman's welfare (and that of the soon-to-be child) would be better by not launching. It can be possible ignore those obligations for research purposes, but the expected result must be 'morally weighty', and expected to greatly benefit the population that the subject is from. That is not the case here.
Okay, then Gregorian is a calendar system and its representation as ISO 8601 includes a year zero (represented as 0000), making the Gregorian year 1900 part of the 20th century in that notation.
This is immoral. Current human-rated spacecraft have a 1 in 250 chance of loss-of-crew (1 in 500 for ascent, 1 in 500 for descent). In a normal launch, the crew are all volunteers and know the risk. The baby is not, and does not. It looks like it would double or triple the probability of death depending on how you count (1:160 stillborn, 6:1000 infant mortality from live births before the age of 1 in the US, 3.3:1000 in the Netherlands).
Some people reschedule at the last minute, leaving a space empty. Some people book round-trip ticket but use them as one-way. Some people (richer than I) book multiple tickets so if, say, a meeting runs late they can still catch the red-eye home.
Not only is that not true, nor funny, but it's a pretty bigoted description of life in Africa.
To start, in Tanzania with one of the highest rates of lion attacks, about 50 people die from lion attacks (I can't find solid numbers; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion#Man-eating says about 37 per year in the 1990s), while 18K people die from traffic accidents.
The usual explanation is lack of education, especially for women, distrust of prophylactics, religious views (eg, the strong influence in Africa of the Catholic Church's fight against condom use), and the view that children will provide more help with the household chores. Yes, the Catholic Church is far more responsible than any fear of lions.
A caution for those as sensitive as me - by the first minute there were several almost certain deaths, and many injured horses. I could not watch any more.
Err, umm. This came 8 months too late for us - only a few weeks to go! But unlike Australia, here in feminist Sweden I get a most of year of paid paternal leave, not two weeks.
Minor complaint: the article mentions there are more germs than "even the surface of a toilet". Every (pop science) article I've seen on the topic says that the surface of a toilet is one of the most sanitary places in the house. So not a good comparison.
To start, in Tanzania with one of the highest rates of lion attacks, about 50 people die from lion attacks (I can't find solid numbers; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion#Man-eating says about 37 per year in the 1990s), while 18K people die from traffic accidents.
The usual explanation is lack of education, especially for women, distrust of prophylactics, religious views (eg, the strong influence in Africa of the Catholic Church's fight against condom use), and the view that children will provide more help with the household chores. Yes, the Catholic Church is far more responsible than any fear of lions.