[greggman3]

I got all that. They're still going to look at statistics to decide how who to risk billions of dollars on a space mission.

This is no different than say insurance companies charging more for people under 25. You might be 19 and the safest driver in the world. Doesn't matter, the statistics say, people under 25 get in accidents. Same with all kinds of things.

It's not like a space program has infinity money and sends up a rocket to Saturn every day. So, they have to lower the risks and one of the ways they do that is by trying to select extremely healthy people to be astronauts. Sure, one person how's genes say they are unhealthy might happen to outlive everyone how's genes say they are healthy but that's not how it works. They're still going to use some form of selection by genes (health, body size, eye sight, hearing, etc...) so select people they feel give the mission the highest chance of success.

If you're blind, deaf, have missing or deformed limbs, a "bad" heart, etc... you aren't going to be selected.