> Why be so secretive? This is not a military mission. These missions cost a lot of taxpayer money (money well spend you may argue), but we deserve full transparency.

We deserve as much transparency as we can get on the science we as taxpayers paid for, not full de-anonymization of the bodily happenings of living crew. There's certainly valuable science here, but the crew member doesn't have to be outed for it.

> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.

I don't think this is a healthy mindset, and there's a heck of a slippery slope with this argument. Would we apply this to companies receiving federal grants too? Contractors? Universities? Schools? That's a lot of people who'll lose medical privacy for something probably unrelated to their job, and there'll be a much smaller applicant pool for the jobs themselves if applicants are aware that their own internal issues might be disclosed when the public clamors for it.

> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.

Agree, NASA certainly will, and new science and engineering will come of it that we benefit from. But that doesn't have to involve breaching medical privacy and ethics.

What difference would this make to you? It would unnecessarily violate someone’s medical privacy for no actual benefit to the public other than satisfying someone’s curiosity.

> You don't get to go to space on other people's money and expect privacy.

Yes, everyone gets privacy. You don’t get to see their private communications back home. You don’t get their medical records.

They aren’t receiving money from taxpayers like a gift. They’re doing a job. It’s ridiculous to demand that they forfeit their privacy because tax money was involved.

> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.

NASA will learn what went wrong here because they’re in a position to act on

You are not in a position to do anything about it. Violating their privacy would make no difference.

> We might want to learn from what went wrong here.

I'm sure NASA is keeping good records and will take lessons learned from this situation, but they can do that without blasting someone's private medical information out publicly.

Without taking a side, I'll share the interesting detail that NASA did not historically grant much medical privacy to astronauts. You can read medical reports of the Apollo-Soyuz crew here (documenting their poisoning by toxic rocket fuel, dinitrogen tetroxide),

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19770023791 ("The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: Medical report" (1977))

These are free people (who happen to have a job that involves a space program). They have the same rights to [try to] keep their medical concerns private as you and I do.

It does cost a lot of money to keep their jobs going, but: They're not slaves. We do not own these people.

The astronaut in question may choose to disclose that they had the medical emergency and possibly its nature, but it seems wholly reasonable to not single them out (when it affects the whole mission) or disclose their medical status.

What possible use is it to the taxpayer to know who was affected by what health condition? NASA knows who the person is, if there is any lesson to be learned this policy isn't stopping them. What lesson do you, random citizen, expect to learn? What would you do differently if you had access to this information?

If it is policy to overshare medical details, that might lead astronauts to delay or refuse to give medical information that does matter to the mission. Before we talk at all of medical ethics, on purely pragmatic grounds this information ought to be confidential.

Yes, but at the same time I think NASA has long earned the trust to decide these things. Regardless of the issue, nobody wants their health issues aired to the entire world. I am personally okay just not knowing the intimate details.

I don't think taxes being used can justify a breach of medical confidentiality

Demanding every intimate personal detail of a human whose paycheck you happen to underwrite feels a little ... inhumane.

People in general expect privacy when it comes to medical issues.

I think it’s possible to be sufficiently transparent while simultaneously keeping someone’s personal health status private.

As a hypothetical example, it’s possible to disclose if this health issue was known before they were selected for the mission, and if it was, what processes were in place to determine if they should or should not go, etc, all without revealing personal health information.

When I say I want full transparency, I usually am talking about how much pay they received and in the case of elected representatives, their net worth at least once a year.

I wouldn't ask for a full health report to be made public by law. Maybe a summary for elected officials.

May be it would be better to have a full diagnosis after splashdown?

Do you seriously believe that you should have the right to demand access to the private medical records of every teacher, soldier, judge, cop, etc. in the country because their pay comes from taxpayers? If yes I'm not quite sure how to respond, IMO that's an utterly absurd position. If no, why are astronauts being singled out for this treatment?

Perhaps you should chill and wait until they land before you start with your ridiculous paranoid thinking and entitlement?

You know that golden ballroom Trump has been constructing with your tax dollars isn’t going to be for the public either…

The only medical condition I can think of which they would not disclose is pregnancy. That would lead to further questions and is controversial despite being very simple. Further evidenced by the fact that the affected crew member is unknown to the public.