i agree with the second half of your comment, but with regards to the first part, don’t you think that space travel — an endeavor that subjects the human body and mind to immense, unadapted-for stress — can/should only be undertaken by the most physically and mentally capable?

we’re hardly experts at space travel (google says only 533 people have been to orbit). given that number, any disability is significant for the job of going to space at this point, especially when every action can potentially bring immediate death to everyone around you.

We are sending people in space for the last sixty years. Each of them has been monitored comprehensively and we know what are the stressors during those missions. Especially when it comes to height and legs, they doesn't mean much in zero gravity. If the person is tough enough to survive the acceleration, they should be good to go. The only real issue might be if the equipment has some hidden assumptions for the arm length of the user.

height i could understand. reasonably short people seem like they’d be advantageous for space travel, up to a point — same as pilots on earth. but legs seem.. pretty important. i can’t imagine that someone without legs would be as mobile or able to stabilise themselves as well as legged individuals in low gravity, and doing an eva to repair something outside a spacecraft would seem especially perilous.

That's not what I meant. I meant the best people _for the job_. I agree that candidates shouldn't be excluded because of disabilities that are irrelevant to the job of being an astronaut, but that's not why they're doing this. As the ESA spokesperson says, "it's in the principle of diversity and inclusiveness".

It might not be what you meant, but it's seems to be an underlying principle upon which your argument was based (if accidentally). Otherwise there is no reason to presume that an individual with a disability cannot be the best for the job (which you did).

Also, saying that an action is taken "in the principle of diversity and inclusiveness" does not imply that the decision was solely based on that, so that quote is meaningless to your argument.

You understand diversity and inclusiveness like a sudoku puzzle where you have artificial constraints that must be satisfied in order to complete the task. On the other side, diversity and inclusiveness might be the removal of artificial constraints that limit the choices that one can make.

Why is that worth a downvote? You disagree with his argument, but his comment is contributing to the discussion.

As I said, because it implies that people with disabilities cannot be the best fit for a job and their achievements are not as good as anybody else's but a wasteful charity that is yet another box in a compliance checklist.

Downvote isn't a "I don't agree with your logic" button.

Paul Graham said it is.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314