Got a business where your employees are regularly indulging in space travel and have contact with aliens? You need to follow the law!

Employee Safety Procedures For Space

The Health & Safety in Space Act 1905 laid down the foundations of space safety.

Penned by an unknown American space travel agency, it contains essential space travel insights such as:

"The space traveller must fasten their dicky bow with much tightness. Due to kinetic energy and g-forces, the dicky bow will be lost if not tightened tightly. It is of much essential consideration to ensure the dicky bow is very tightly fastened indeed, so as so maintain the amiable visage of space travellers.

Space travellers are also obliged to wear a bowler hat and magic underpants to assuage the powers that be for gravitational slingshots. None of which are a possibility if a dicky bow is not present and fastened very tightly."

The Act was updated in 1977 after criticisms of its safety anachronisms.

Physicists were particularly disdainful, claiming dicky bows don’t affect space travel and offer no protection against g-forces.

And so we now have the Health and Safety in Space Act 1977. Officials took the decision to remove the ampersand to make the Act look more official. In an official statement by one of the officials, a statement read:

"This decision was not taken lightly. But we truly believe ampersands have no place in space. As such, we have removed the logogram representing the conjunction 'and' in favour of the word 'and'."

Although this caused much consternation and fury in the grammatical world, ampersands have not returned to space since 1977.

Subsequent amends to the Act include 2010 and 2012 to eradicate lingering references to antiquated clothing fashions (dicky bows, hot pants, and flares).

These days, the Act is an essential guideline for all humans in space. It ensures, for example, an astronaut doesn’t take their helmet off in a fit of boredom. This is a breach of health and safety etiquette in space.

The Rules For Working in Space

Regardless of your type of space business (black market dealings with aliens, Moon tourism, treks to Jupiter etc.), you need a health and safety policy.

Under international Earth law, there’s a set of rules you need to follow:

1. Absolutely no freeform jazz rehearsals during a spacewalk.
2. Astronauts must not punch each other in the face. No matter how angry they get.
3. Female astronauts only have permission to kick a male astronaut in the testicles if the latter utters the phrases “Ooo, missus!” or “That’s what she said!”
4. No cheese in space. Not even cheesy chips.
5. No Marmite in space under no exceptional circumstances.
6. Murder in space is still the same as murder on Earth. So don’t do it.
7. Do not do anything that may make aliens not interact with us (e.g. swearing, doodling, or excessive whinging).
8. Do not bring a romance bazooka into space. Space is inherently unromantic and should be treated with such respect. Any attempts at nauseating flirting whilst in space will result in disciplinary action.
9. No country music—ever.
10. Just don’t do anything stupid, for God’s sake.

Enforcing Health and Safety in Space

It’s important for your astronaut employees to follow the Health and Safety in Space Act. Otherwise they may all die horribly.

For example, the astronaut lads may have a laugh at a woman’s expensive by going “Ooo, missus!” But this may distract everyone at a crucial moment, thusly leading to the spaceship careering into the Moon.

As such, train your space staff to respect each other’s boundaries. Threaten anyone who doesn’t at least try with gross misconduct.

Terrify. Belittle. Manipulate. It’s the capitalist way and an indication you’re a successful business owner with their head stuck up their zero gravity arse.