Humans Not Meant for Space

[Granfalloon]

Don't they have a cream for that? My wife has a closet full of facial creams. Surely one of them must help with that.

Don't forget that all of this can be overcome by creating artificial gravity. Just read a few of Arthur C. Clarke's Novels (2001, 2010, or Rendezvous with Rama) and you'll get very well written descriptions of artificial gravity. Here's one article about how they are approaching it these days:

SPACE.com -- Artificial Gravity: A New Spin on an Old Idea

 

[Interference]

I think that's what's keeping long space missions in check for so long. Until they come up with a cost-effective and efficient means of creating earth-like conditions in flight, we probably won't be going anywhere for a while.

 

[Nik]

Um, was watching a program on history of ISS, when they showed a clip of SkyLab. There was ample volume in that for the crew to jog around the internal circumference, do somersaults etc...

(Wasn't spun, they just did 'wall of death' stuff... )

Okay, it was 'only' the 'repurposed' third stage of a Saturn or something, but it sure puts the ISS to shame...

Two issues here: Even with a Skylab-sized spun habitat for fractional g-alike *plus* several hours a 'day' of vigorous work-outs, there's still the issue of transit time. At the moment, any trip to eg Mars is at risk from solar storms. A hardened 'storm cellar' will help, but two or three 'ordinary' storms, or one 'whopper', will push the crew to the limit...

( They'd better carry spare bone-marrow, be blood-group exchange compatible. IIRC, there's been NO mention of this by NASA/ESA etc... )

Moon, Mars or asteroid, a base must be 'dug in' by several metres to shield a CME effectively. Having a Martian lava-tube handy could save the ground crew's life. Of course, the orbiting team could be fried...

Which is why, reluctantly, if you want to go out beyond low-orbit, you really, really need nuclear power. It shortens the transfer time, improving the odds. It hauls a fair radiation shield along 'for free'. It improves your chances many-fold...

---

One head-scratcher over gravity: Assuming it stays inverse-square over cosmological distances, doesn't go MOND where space/time is approx. flat...

IIRC, gravity as 'space warp' or 'gravitons' must still propagate at c-speed. But, over vast distances, everything moves meanwhile. Surely there's a vector offset ?? Even if gravitons are 'entangled' ?? I know there's a different, proven frame-dragging effect under high spin...

I'm thinking of the c+ illusion seen with some quasars due to their wobble swinging their polar emission like a searchlight beam...

My head hurts...

 

[Interference]

Mine, too - now .... cheers, Nik

 

[Arwena]

Artificial gravity. Now there's an idea. How do they do that in Star Trek??? Maybe the installation of a mini-black hole???

 

[Interference]

Can something infinitely dense and infinitely small have a mini version of itself? I know what you're going to say. Alan Titchmarsh's daughter, but that's not what I meant and you know it.

 

[Parson]

Artificial gravity. Now there's an idea. How do they do that in Star Trek??? Maybe the installation of a mini-black hole???

Actually they suppose that the acceleration provides the effect of gravity. The problem they are dealing with is too much gravity and inertia. For that they have anti-gravity and inertial dampeners. But no mention of how this is done, simply because no one has the least clue.

 

[Nik]

Space-bending

Um, in current theory, your mini black-hole can be any mass from atomic upwards. This is why those protestors were trying to get CERN to shut down the Big Ring...

As for using a modest black-hole to impart artificial gravity, it would have to mass the same as a fair sized asteroid or small planet. Hauling that around would be tricky. Of course, you may turn the idea on its head, use the black hole for propulsion and have that 'pull' the ship along with you and your fuel aboard...

IIRC, idea was very well explored by Charles Sheffield in his 'Engineer' series of short stories...
Hasty google...
McAndrew. Chronicles etc.

Um, hypothetically, if you can warp space to push/pull a spacecraft, local use to keep food on your plate and coffee in your mug seems reasonable...

In my 'Convention' tales, this trick is generally used to reduce local gravity so 'Spacers' may live on planet surface. Problem is you must have an array of 'poles' to approximate a 'level playing field'. Keeping them all happy, balanced and in tune could be problematic...

FWIW, I hand-waved such 'Poles' as 'Phased Arrays of Ambient Super-Conducting Distributed Tunnel Diodes'. Happens they're usually deposited on mono-isotopic diamond slabs about the size and weight as a large marble pastry-rolling block. By the time you add a labyrinthine cooling system and appropriate connections, mountings etc, you're talking suit-case size per. Given limited dissipation and to provide redundancy, you would run many in parallel to emulate 'mega-poles'. Then, you would 'phase' such groups as:

'One Pole, null-g.
Three thrust, five fly,
Earth, Moon and Mars,
Nine go to the stars !'

 

[Ursa major]

Actually they suppose that the acceleration provides the effect of gravity. The problem they are dealing with is too much gravity and inertia. For that they have anti-gravity and inertial dampeners. But no mention of how this is done, simply because no one has the least clue.

The Chief Engineer knows more than enough about it. (So much so, that if the Enterprise's mechanism - whatever it is - is required to work well beyond its design parameters, it will take only a few hours for this to be arranged. Just like the warp drives, in fact.)

 

[Granfalloon]

Artificial gravity. Now there's an idea. How do they do that in Star Trek??? Maybe the installation of a mini-black hole???

All I know is that it would never work properly without an ample supply of Di-Lithium Crystals.

As the captain and the crew floated randomly about the bridge, Captain Kirk was heard to yell into his shirt button thingy, "Scotty, Scotty, what's wrong... with the ship?!!!"

The reply came back -
"I doen't uenderstaand it Coaptan, the Di-Liethium crystols joost queet on mea sirr."

 

[skeptical]

In Star Trek they talk of 'gravity plating'. Sadly, today's physics has no way, even in theory, of achieving this. The simplest method of achieving a gravity equivalent, for a trip to Mars for example, is to send two pods, tethered together, and spinning around their centre of mass.

Personally, I like the idea of adding one more. The centre mass contains the motors, fuel etc, and is at zero G. Then, there are two other capsules on either side of the centre one, at the end of tubes. The whole system is spinning with the outer living capsules having a gravity equivalent, and the centre capsule having none. Astronauts live in the outer capsules, but can crawl down the joining tubes to check the engines, or to continue to the other living pod to have a beer with their buddies.

The point made earlier about radiation is valid. In fact, normal background cosmic radiation is enough to cause a very high rate of cancer for any astronaut that might make a return trip to Mars. On top of this, a solar flare may kill them outright. However, the high risk will not, I predict, prevent people volunteering to go to Mars. Unless we get a technological break through, putting shielding on a Mars craft would be too massy, making it impractical.

 

[matt-browne-sfw]

Eventually go mad in space? Holodeck technology isn't so far away. Seriously. 3d-television, head-mounted displays, virtual reality... space psychologists should take this development into account.

 

[Sparrow]

The point made earlier about radiation is valid. In fact, normal background cosmic radiation is enough to cause a very high rate of cancer for any astronaut that might make a return trip to Mars. On top of this, a solar flare may kill them outright. However, the high risk will not, I predict, prevent people volunteering to go to Mars. Unless we get a technological break through, putting shielding on a Mars craft would be too massy, making it impractical.

Radiation, and Cosmic Radiation in particular do more than just cause cancers in humans, it mutates and kills neural stem cells. The worry is that astronauts will lose mental capacity on a long space journey.
They might even go insane...

Just look at the before and after photos of NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak...
http://www.denverpost.com/sitemap/ci_5167528

... and that was after just one week in space.

 

[skeptical]

Sparrow.
Very funny!

Radiation is a real problem, and will cause harm to long term astronauts. However, that will not be enought to prevent people going to Mars.

Of course, any Mars colony will have to be underground. It takes about 10 metres of dirt overhead to cut radiation on Mars down to Earth normal levels.

My own view is that, long term, we will need to genetically engineer people to be more radiation tolerant. Genes for more effective DNA repair have been identified in animals and bacteria that are much more radiation tolerant than we are. Suitable gene insertion should be able to create a radiation tolerant Homo sapiens.

Perhaps in 100 years or so, people will be less irrational about the idea of improving our species genetically. Tolerance to higher radiation will benefit everyone, since it will also confer greater resistance to cancer.

 

[Sparrow]

In the distant future I wouldn't be surprised if they bioengineer astronauts and perhaps even have a decades long breeding program for men and women tailor made for deep space missions. That's another thing NASA never talks about. Just try to get funding passed for experiments in genetic tinkering for the purposes of altering God's Creation.

As it stands now, we can hardly have proper stem cell research without a hullabaloo from certain religious groups.