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NASA Policy Includes Mars, Moon Missions
TopSpin writes "The US House of Representatives passed a bill establishing NASA policy for the next two years. The bill is seen as an endorsement of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, including returning man to the Moon and eventually Mars. The House struggled with compromising other NASA initiatives against new manned exploration, eventually deciding to expand the budget enough to accommodate both prerogatives. The bill also endorses a servicing and repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope."
If you really want to know what it will be like on orbit and on the Moon, read Orbital Decay or Lunar Descent by Allen Steele.
His thoughts are that the comment about iron workers being the first to orbit isn't too far off. While his books are decidedly 80s-ish (pot smoking steel workers more interested in getting whiskey on a shuttle flight than working), I think he's on the right track.
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
"The problem, of course, becomes trying to establish the safety of childbearing in low Gs"
No, that's not the problem.
We can debate all of the "fufy" issues regarding space travel until the cows come home.
Radiation. That's the major issue on the table. For short missions (a few months) it's a non issue. But for missions that take a year or so, like a mars mission, the people will be exposed to the continuous Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) and the solar cycle dependent solar energetic Particle (SEP) events... i.e. radiation. Our atmosphere shields us from the majority of these particles but when you put someone on the moon or mars you have to duplicate the shielding of the Earths atmosphere to achieve the same radiation protection we enjoy on Earth. Bottom line is that is a lot of mass and some of that mass has the nasty problem that it produces a lot of secondary particles (neutrons).
To shield or not to shield... that is the question.
There are a lot of people working on this problem. There is currently no solution. If we put someone in space for an extended period of time (years) there is a serious radiation problem. We will get there in the future but bringing issues up like childbearing, or the mental fatigue, or if masturbation in low G causes a tilted penis... etc... are orders of magnitude below the real current threats.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"