BY LEE PFEIFFER
In the pre-credits sequence for the 1967 James Bond film "You Only Live Twice", an astronaut dies while on a spacewalk, his body left to drift for eternity in the Great Beyond. I saw the film at age ten when it first opened and that scene continued to haunt me through repeated viewings over the decades because the possibility of someone dying in a similar fashion was very real, especially during the era of the U.S.- Soviet space race. I often wondered what the possibilities were for addressing such a death in space. Countless movies and TV series have focused on the concept of astronauts in crisis ranging from "B" sci-fi movies of the 1950s to marvelous schlock such as the "Lost in Space" TV series to esteemed feature films like "Apollo 13" and "Gravity" and now the Netflix sensation "Away". In many of the scenarios, astronauts die while on a mission. But what happens when someone really dies while exploring space? The answers are not very glamorous and they range from attempting to bring the body back home (not very practical) to allowing it to drift forever in space to the most unpalatable consideration: cannibalism, if the crew finds itself stranded and starving. Shannon Stirrone, writing on the Popular Science website, presents the cold, unsentimental scenarios that all astronauts must consider- even if they never openly discuss them. Click here to read.