Hi All

Assuming you're not being facetious - and Raoul's ideas needed a splash of cold water - then your idea has merit, especially since brain-machine interfaces are advancing at an incredible pace. Multi-amputees - particularly legless ones - in my view would be ideal for crewing a Mars-orbital or fly-by mission since they'd be less inclined to want to "stretch their legs".

But thinking further afield people who daily live and interact through brain-machine interfaces would be ideal for teleoperation work of all kinds, especially orbital servicing through remote-robotics for example. The sheer mass needed to ship an astronaut to a satellite and keep them alive on the job makes on-orbit servicing hard to justify. With teleoperation... well I can see real potential.

Even further out teleoperated systems would be ideal for exploring all sorts of nasty environments - under the ice of Galilean moons, on the lava plains of Io, in the ethane sludge on Titan, and so forth. And the people who live day-to-day through such a medium would be ideal explorers in ways able-bodied people wouldn't be.

Anne McCaffrey has written a lot on this very idea - her "brain ships" are a logical extension of the concept, though using a able-bodied "brawn" rather than a 'bot.

Adam