Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the biomedical ethicist Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, who along with colleagues has called for the commercial space industry to adopt ethical policies and best practices for research done on humans during space flights.

Rahimzadeh, who is at Baylor College of Medicine in the US, explains that as well as minimizing risks to paying astronauts who take part in experiments, an ethical framework should also ensure that private spaceflight – which is still the purview of the elite – benefits society as a whole.

• Rahimzadeh and colleagues outline their call for an ethical framework in an article in Science