I'd actually like to address the concern of the lawful/unlawful mix in academia which might otherwise not agree with the participants. Understanding that a straight-laced, lawful and upstanding Rheinland scientist might take issue with the dubious ethics of some of the more militant/crazy-as-all-get-out fellows pursuing the chemical isotopes in cardemine...through human research - the latter would realize that the legality of his practices would be of some concern, and he couldn't exactly advertise them. In this case, the organization of this community would NOT protect said madhat from getting arrested for using human guiniea pigs.
On another note, unless the scheme is truly horrific, scientists may be somewhat inclined to accept it as a necessary evil.
A competing school of thought is to simply split up the nutjobs and the straight-laced scientists into two organizations - though, if it were a single academia, the split might be one of orthodoxy, not organization, so the split largely uninstitutionalized.
In other words, the nutjobs might keep to their end of the Academia sandbox, and the straight-laced to another.
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
I am not so sure about a union of scientists flying about. With the technology and resources available I would believe most mainstream scientist would stay planet side.
Scientific resources are probably held very close to the chests of the governing bodies and corporations. The researchers would have the ability to have the military or hired pilots conduct field research while they monitor it at home.
Now, there is definitely room for non-mainstream scientists. These would include researchers that are insane, maniacal, unlawful or just ostracized by the mainstream community. These types would have to rely on more limited resources and would conduct their own experiments in space. However, I don't think these people would organize.
