Expert: Mars Astronauts Would Lose Teeth

Ant wrote to us with a story on Discovery about the long term consequences of manned and "womanned" missions to Mars - lots of research about bone-weakening effects of zero G environments, with tooth loss high on the list.

Comments

Mars is not a zero G environment

[tinrobot]

The discovery page seems dead. But, going out on a limb -- from what I've read, it seems to take about 6 months to get to mars. There have been more than a few people who've lasted this long in space, and they seemed to have nice smiles when they returned.

Once on mars, the effects should be mitigated by the gravitational field - right? How much less is mars' gravity compared to earth?

ways to combat body atrophy

[tcyun]

As I recall, most astronauts who are in space for any extended period of time have a fairly rigorous workout routine to prevent muscle atrophy. Obviously, exercising with spring based machines (as it is fairly pointless to try to "lift" weights) helps to keep muscles in shape but also stresses the bones also helps maintain bone mass.

The Discovery article states "...in both older women and weightless astronauts, the bone-repair mechanisms in the body shut down." Are there any doctors out there that can explain (in detail) what happens to the body in low gravity that causes bones to atrophy?

Gum anyone?

[M_T_Toaster]

Wouldn't chewing gum give some protection against this?
It would give them plenty of exercise to the teeth and jaw muscles, and might well be popular (most astronauts are American now and so presumably like chewing the cud).

OTOH the gum might also come in handy for fixing things in the ship and or holding things down in zero g

think of the sponsorship deals... the Wrigley's Orbiter etc

Re:Artificial Gravity?

[sean23007]

The Mars Society has already thought of this. You are correct when you assume that you need a ridiculously large vessel to make this feasible. But, the way the Mars Society theorists got around the issue is to separate the craft into two parts separated by a teflon tether, of a sort. The first part of the craft would be larger and contain everything the astronauts would need on the voyage to Mars. The second part would be considerably smaller but nearly equivalent in weight (space for living astronauts is considerable). The two parts would then be spun around each other with initial and occasional blasts from small, dedicated retro rockets.

The problem is, in order to simulate 1G of gravity (equal to that on Earth), you need a certain mixture of size and speed. For safety reasons, the tether can only be so long. So you would think they could just increase the speed. It works on paper, but when put into practice with such a small vessel, spinning at that speed would most likely just induce vertigo in the astronauts and the small size of the craft would allow small variations in the rotation to create noticeable rocking, much like a ship at sea. Luckily, there is an easy solution to this problem. Just simulate the gravity on Mars. Spinning at a reasonable speed, the craft would be able to simulate the necessary 0.38G safely and easily. And then there's less of a problem on both landings (Mars and Earth), because even if you were able to simulate full Earth gravity, would you really want to? When you land on Mars, some considerable amount of time would have to be devoted to getting acclimated to the gravity, during which time the astronauts would not be fully operational and not exactly able to do the required exploration work. With a gravity of 0.38G on the transporting spacecraft, that acclimation can be done over the 6 month travel period and the astronauts can hop out and get their work done immediately after landing.