The First Wheelchair User To Travel To Space Is About To Make History

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has announced the participants on its next space tourist flight, the 37th launch for the New Shepard rocket configuration, and one crew member is of particular note. Engineer Michi Benthaus will become the first wheelchair user to fly above the edge of space.

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The date of the flight has not been announced yet, just the passengers. They are Michaela (Michi) Benthaus, Joey Hyde, Hans Koenigsmann, Neal Milch, Adonis Pouroulis, and Jason Stansell. These six will be joining the already 80 people who have taken a trip in the Blue Origin rocket. Six of these 80 have actually traveled more than once.

They will fly to the edge of space, the so-called Karman Lin, located 100 kilometers (61 miles) above sea level, though it is just a convenient demarcation; there are no physical changes happening to the atmosphere there.

Benthaus is an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency. She’s an advocate for greater access to space, and she has previously completed both an analog astronaut training program and a Zero G flight.

The European Space Agency actually has plans to send a person with a physical disability to the International Space Station (ISS). Former Paralympian, now surgeon and astronaut, John McFall is the first disabled astronaut to be cleared for a long-duration mission to the ISS by feasibility studies.

These studies were to understand how microgravity would affect McFall’s body. He lost his lower right leg, from just above the knee, and tests were conducted in simulated microgravity, such as the Zero G flight, to see how bodily fluid shifts in an amputated limb.

The 18 months' worth of studies confirm that people with disabilities such as his can safely and successfully travel to space. The next phase is to study the use of a prosthesis in microgravity. For now, McFall is part of the ESA Astronaut Reserve, training to be an astronaut, hopefully, for a mission to the ISS.

Accessibility in space is a topic that appears to have not been widely explored, despite the vast number of people with disabilities around the world. About 1 in 4 adults in the US has a disability. Benthaus' flight will be short, only about 10 minutes, up to the edge of space and back, but it will be significant. It has taken over five decades of human space flight to get the first person with a physical disability to reach space. And it's not insignificant that it is a private space trip and not a government-funded space agency doing it.

There have been criticisms of Blue Origin in terms of who gets access to these space tourism flights, especially following the first all-female space tourist flight earlier this year, which included Katy Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, Jeff Bezos’s new wife. The whole affair was a PR disaster that failed to raise awareness of the very issue it aimed to highlight: women in space. Still, it did make history for something no space agency has yet managed.

Benthaus' flight will certainly have a record, but its long-term impact on accessibility and inclusion in space exploration is hard to fathom. It's unlikely this will be something the current iteration of NASA will explore, since the space agency has so far followed the Trump Administration’s executive orders and purged all mention of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), which includes disabilities and support, from its initiatives.