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Disease May Prevent Manned Journey To Mars
Pickens writes "Science Daily News reports that human missions to Mars and all other long-term space flights might be compromised by disease, first because space travel appears to weaken astronauts' immune systems; and second, because it increases the virulence and growth of microbes. 'When people think of space travel, often the vast distances are what come to mind first,' says Jean-Pol Frippiat from Nancy-University in France, 'but even after we figure out a way to cover these distances in a reasonable amount of time, we still need to figure out how astronauts are going to overcome disease and sickness.' Frippiat says studies show that immune systems of both people and animals in space flight conditions are significantly weaker than their grounded counterparts and that common pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli and Staphylococcus reproduce more rapidly in space flight conditions, leading to increased risk of contamination, colonization and serious infection."
Diversified ecosystem.
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Well, we had people on long term space missions on Mir and ISS that are comparable in time with a mars mission, without them being eaten alive by E. coli, Salmonella and whatnot. What was the problem again?
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
This isn't a first post, but it's the only Ice Pirates reference on Slashdot.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Wouldn't it help to have them in a sterile environment for a prolonged period to make sure they are not taking any particularly nasty microbes on in the first place? Perhaps give them a few shots of antibiotics to be on the safe side? Or even give them some immune boosting drugs to take along. Oh and make sure they take a lot of brocolli with them and that they eat all their vegetables.
that's an easy one: send someone before they've hatched. you just send them in an incubator, and raise them at the destination with the help of strong AI and com links. An egg is much easier to protect from diseases than a grown person...
Why not rotate the ship for "artificial gravity"?
While getting rid of salmonella is good, you can't get rid of all disease causing bacteria. And if the environment you live in is too sterile, your body just becomes more susceptible to other infections and to auto-immune disease.
Injecting antibiotics is about the worst thing you can do because it really messes up your bacterial ecology. Bacteria are a natural part of your body, and if you start killing them with antibiotics, things go wrong. Antibiotics should really only be taken when there is a serious infection present.
In addition to artificial gravity (via rotation), the solution may be to challenge the body with other microbes that are known to be not too harmful, similar to "pro-biotic drinks".
Why do we care about sending our meatbag selves to other planets? I'd be more productive if we could just send some strong AI to do it for us.
to keep things sterile...
Prototype here:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/813/kryten2.jpg
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Maybe we're meant to be on Earth after all? The conditions seem just fine, ... for now at least.
But please, send more robots first. They can do a lot more with a lot less controversy.
There have been ISS Expeditions that have lasted times comparable to at least one way to Mars - Expeditions 4, 6, 8 and 13 at least. There is no microbiological difference between orbiting the Earth and going to Mars, so I would conclude that people should be able to get to Mars just fine.
I still think that truly deep space exploration will require artificial gravity (i.e., spinning spacecraft), but this sounds like FUD to justify research funds to me.
Sounds like a good thing!
Of course, by the time we have the technologies you propose, we're just as likely to have ion propulsion that can get us there in less than a month.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Look into what Bigelow Aerospace is doing. If you spin an inflated structure fast enough to get 1 G of acceleration, it's the same as doing so with a rigid structure.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Boy how would those trips compare to early the first voyages to the "New World", except that they will probably be more clean, more antiseptic, and their health will be monitored much more closely.
What's worse tuill now no one has pointed this out. What pussies we've become.
Have you guys never used the Freezer before ? Seems to slow down bacterial growth very well...
The conquistadors at the 15th century were able to travel long distances on ships full of diseases, and yet conquered and eliminated the native civilizations of America. Diseases may be a difficulty, but they won't prevent space travel.
In those times.
If they lost 30% of the crew, that wasn't considered to be such a big deal.
But imagine the impact today:
When losing 10% of your armed forced during a war is considered way too much.
Day care
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
We can either choose to fight them with our microbes over there, or be forced to fight them with our microbes here.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does.
Lots of sex.
Without condoms (and with swallowing). Regular exchange of bodily fluids also keeps your immune system ticking over. Regular sex might help morale as well.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
.. given that sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources. As well all know, can do science research on Mars at a fraction of the cost of sending a space shuttle into a week lond trip around earth, much less the cost of the human mission that has a chance of reaching Mars. And don't tell me the B.S. about colonizing Mars. Earth will remain hospitable for life for hundreds of millions of years. If there is going to be some kind of catastrophe on Earth, it's far more likely that we could deal with it on earth (at least to extent of saving the human race) than making Mars, which is a dead wasteland right now, viable for continuing human life.
Then don't have em in Zero-G , Spinning parts of the ship etc, if it's too hard to build it here make it so a part of the ship "expands" once in orbit. There, no zero-G no viral problems!
I'm just saying, maybe those Nancy frenchmen have weak immune systems, but I don't see a problem for us Americans.
Two words: hand sanitizer.
What this post is suggesting is that the type of astronaut and the type of medicine practiced needs to be revisited. Is there now a need to send astronaut doctors as part of the mission team? Will discoveries made on these missions translate to new and better medical treatments here on terra firma? There have been plenty of other spin offs from the space program, why not [at least] one more?
What about cryogenic suspension? That would be one way of dealing with the issue. We could either rotate the crew in suspension or do the Alien thing where the computer just wakes everyone up once they get there.
I saw it on Star Trek too...so it must be true.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
The answer is to build a faster spaceship. We need to have nuclear powered craft of some sort. The distances are simply too vast for chemical rockets. You could spend billions trying to study all the ways to keep people up in space safely for two years and probably still screw it up. The enemy is time, so solve that problem, and everything else will fall into place. That at least can get us around the solar system, and there should be enough materials in that to build some sort of an interstellar craft for extremely long range missions.
This is my sig.
For interstellar travel, you need a big spaceship with:
a) nuclear propulsion that can accelerate the spacecraft to relativistic needs.
b) a nuclear power source, so as that the ship does not remain out of power for a long time; plus, you can run an electromagnetic shield around the craft, just like Earth has one.
c) artificial gravity with rotating sections.
d) landing craft.
e) a large sick bay.
This last item comes handy when there is sickness and disease. Furthermore, a big spaceship minimizes the chances of infection.
This craft will not land on planets. It will be constructed in orbit. It will cost trillions, but once it is built and goes operational, man can travel to other planets of our solar system with ease.
... the Terrans were killed off by the common cold.
They don't exactly grow their food in space. So fresh food is rare. And no. Neither heated, nor frozen food suffices in the long term. Let alone the total trash that is what we call "normal food". Meaning everything that's processed ...and processed again, ...until it's more a chemo-cocktail, with tons of wrecked proteins, destroyed molecules, and all vital substances out of balance, than species-appropriate food.
Sorry, but as long as you keep that mentality, and shoot "normal" "food" (according to the average joe or the food chemist) into space, people will, just as on sailing ships, become sick of many various things. Just like we do down here. But much quicker. We call them "age-related" diseases, because we think they come because of age. When in reality, they come *with* age. Because of decades of eating trash.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Remember. Flies spread disease. So keep yours closed.
It is really sad that nuclear rockets were abandoned when the space race was won by the US against the Russians. Nuclear rockets consist of a reactor that heats hydrogen that is accelerated.
A nuclear rocket would take 3 months to get to mars, 3 months back. Back in 1970, 400 M $ were missing to get the first one off the ground as a third stage of an Apollo rocket.
The theoretical useful weight for a nuclear rocket is 38% of the total that can go up in space, compared to 4% for a chemical rocket.
Nerva-2 would have developped 5000 MW and 90 tonnes of lift. Nerva-1 had already been tested on the ground. 1100 MW and 25 ton lift.
As soon as the Chinese threaten to do this, the US might be back in the race. One can always hope.
The plan in the early 1970ies was to send two of these off to Mars (for obvious redundancy purposes).
I hate these articles which ignore the reality that humans have already discovered anti-gravity propulsion and that humans have already walked Mars. Who cares if disease was or never was an issue? Postings like these are nothing more than propaganda designed to reinforce the mainstream lies regarding the status of human/humanoid activity in space.
Could this be the reason that the Apollo program was filmed in an abandoned aircraft hanger in Arizona?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Because humankind should never embark on a long journey when the threat of sickness (or hunger, or environmental dangers, or giant monsters) looms. Come on. If, as a species, we didn't take risks we'd either still be stuck in caves or dead.
NASA needs to get their heads out of their rear ends and stop dinking around with robots and probes and experiments that might possibly be useful sometime in the future when there's a plan. They need to set big, definitive goals to get mankind back on the moon and out to Mars and work towards those ends. Otherwise they might as well rename themselves the NAA and stop squandering taxpayer dollars on space all together.
Why haven't they tried spinning up a spacecraft to simulate gravity? It seems like a logical step but NASA has been quiet about doing this. At least it would ameliorate (heh... I get points for using that word) some of the issues with long periods of time in zero gravity.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Perhaps they could create artificial gravity by using a 1 mile long cable and a counter weight to slowly rotate the spaceship in large circles. If rotated at just the right speed, they could create the equivalent of 1 G gravity, through centrifugal force. A pilot in a fighter jet experiences the same kind of forces when making a high speed turn.
The cable could be made out of some super strong lightweight material. Extra fuel and other supplies could be used as the counterweight on the other end of the long cable, which would perhaps be about one mile away.
Of course, the other main problem problem would be how to protect the crew from both of the main types of radiation which exist in space. I vaguely recall reading that there are cosmic rays coming from deep space, and there is also another type of radiation which comes from solar flares. Shielding against radiation, might require bringing along a large amount of heavy massive radiation shielding, unless there is some better way to deflect or shield against radiation. I do not know much about radiation or the types radiation in space. However, as I recall, the cosmic rays have much more energy and are the hardest to shield against. I seem to recall reading, that Earth's magnetic field is what protects us here on Earth.
Of course, if heavy radiation shielding is used, then there is then the question of what kind of propulsion systems are efficient enough to move that much massive radiation shielding over interplanetary distances.
I am not an expert on the subject, but that is how I might approach the problem.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-10/saving-skin
"A whale’s skin is easily glommed up with barnacles, algae, bacteria and other sea creatures, but sharks stay squeaky-clean. Although these parasites can pile onto a shark’s rippled skin too, they can’t take hold and thus simply wash away. Now scientists have printed that pattern on an adhesive film that will repel bacteria pathogens from hospitals and public restrooms."
Tie a rope around the crew module and the lander. Separate them by a few hundred feet and start them orbiting each other. Instant gravity.
Borrow a superconducting magnet from the LHC and place it at the center of the 2 modules. Shields up.
Now what's the problem?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
yes.
Or to elaborate a bit, I wonder if we're not neglecting a bigger problem in the other direction. It seems like we're constantly discovering greater degrees of mutualism between humans and the micro-organisms swarming all over (and through) our bodies. A common example is our digestive dependence on bacteria in the intestines, and the recently discovered role of the appendix in maintaining the intestinal culture [1,2].
While I'm not aware of any short term (longest stay in space 400-500 days) effects, what major biological functions might change over many years if the bacterial cultures on our skin (for instance) are weakened or eliminated in hyper-sterile or otherwise non-earth-like colony environments? I recall some speculation recently that bacterial by-products might play a role in altering our emotional states day to day. Imagine the unforeseen psychological effects when a currently unidentified bacteria suddenly vanishes from our bodily ecosystems due to habitat change...
I'm definitely not against manned space exploration or even colonization, but before we start bathing our astronauts in hand sanitizer, somebody needs to consider our physiological dependence on the bacterial ecosystem, not just our war against it.
[1]http://sciences.surgery.duke.edu/wysiwyg/downloads/BillSection1SecondInsert.pdf
[2]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21153898/
Everything is easy when you don't understand the problem.
Dude, the immune system does nothing to combat radiation or radiation damage. What the hell are you talking about?
The immune system also does nothing to prevent claw-hammers, crowbars, drunkenness, or stupid human tricks.
Radiation and physical damage can compromise immune response, but they don't enhance it.
"...the Orion design would have worked by dropping small shaped charge fission or thermonuclear explosives out the rear of a vehicle, detonating them 200 feet (60 m) out, and catching the blast with a thick steel or aluminum pusher plate....The 'base design' consisted of a 4000 ton model planned for ground launch from Jackass Flats, Nevada. Each 0.15 KT (sea-level yield) blast would add 30 mph (50 km/h, 13.89m/s) to the craft's velocity. A graphite based oil would be sprayed on the pusher plate before each explosion to prevent ablation of the surface. To reach low Earth orbit (300mi), this sequence would have to be repeated about 800 times, like an atomic pogo stick.
Jerry Pournelle, who is acquainted with the project and its ex-team leader Freeman Dyson, has been quoted as saying that a single mission could have provided us with a large permanent moon base. Alternatively, an Orion could reach Pluto and return to Earth inside of a year..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) :-D
Here we go yet anothe bunch of we should not go into space panties finding yet another spanner to attempt to stop man getting off this lump of space debries we call home what is it with people these days that makes them such blithering WHIMPS you cant do that you might get hurt well hey people signup to go into space KNOWING there are dangers they accept said dangers else they would NOT have signed up to go so will the pathetic whimps please GO AWAY and let man do what man has to do explore and spread
Yeah, because in the old days sailors never got sick and/or died on the way ... we waited until the medical issues of travelling for months on ships were made 100% safe. Man, when did humans become such a bunch of pansies.
Wrap it up. We are finished here. NASA was just a ponzi scheme that dupped the USA out of Buttzillions of $$$$.
Tonight, on Slashdot: Minor scientists beg for NASA research cash by overhyping their research interests. Film at 11.
I suggest a third possibility: that zero gravity interferes with the immune response at a very basic level. The body uses antibodies to recognize bacteria. For "recognition" they use proteins that mesh with those on the surface of the bacteria. That requires them to approach at the right orientation. Of course, thermal motion will jostle the bacteria and antibodies, so eventually all orientations are tried. However, suppose that bacteria and antibodies are large enough and asymmetric enough that they tend to float with one side up. That reduces the "recognition" problem from five degrees of freedom to four (two to specify the "latitude" and "longitude" on the bacterium, and two to specify like coordinates on the antibody).
I have not found any info on the asymmetry of bacteria or antibodies. X-ray crystallography might be able to detect it. Random tumbling might be close enough to zero gee to show the effect on recognition.
I think any long-term space mission should use artificial gravity.
Proof positive we need to take an Project Orion-style nuclear impulse ship to Mars, arriving there in far less time than in a Hohmann orbit, and significantly faster than the yet unoproven CASIMIR engines. See : Project Orion - The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965. Dyson, George: Penguin. ISBN 0-140-27732-3 or http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&ved=0CBoQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alivetorrents.com%2Ftorrent%2F943314%2Fbbc-to-mars-by-a-bomb-the-secret-history-of-project-orion-xvid-mp3-avi&ei=TBPtSqn8J5TUsgPuhaHUCA&usg=AFQjCNGKfqU6sioxzkg7ZoPhV3a2YmtR4Q&sig2=8Vj1ocSABhkt4WZFntA3ow
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
So many things work great on the drawing board and just suck in real life-- why? Because the designers don't take into account real-life issues like sensor failure, overlapping sensors, redundancy, multiple measurements, measurements taken with different sensor types, and don't make allowances for real world behavior, like when the tires get stuck in the mud, or the turret gets a rock jammed in it just right, or when a camera is broken-- or even just staring into the sun, and they don't make allowances in their algorithms to check, re-check, check some more, look for errors, errant behavior, "stuck" conditions, etc.
Its easy to chalk something like this up to a "math problem"-- ooops, my bad.
But I'd bet good money that in the final analysis the real answer is sloppy design.
If we can find enough energy someplace to provide a constant one G acceleration from an engine, we can get to Mars in 3-5 days. Sounds like the microbes are telling us we need to explore in the energy direction.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis .
Essentially, it seems like it's possible that low levels of radiation are actually beneficial. The jury's still out, but we're looking at it.
++
Actually Venus and balloons do go together.
http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200210/000020021002A0351950.php
http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2009/01/asrg-missions-venus-balloon.html
Long-term, what if we built a whole Cloud City up there where the atmosphere's thin-ish and the sulphuric acid rain slowed to a romantic drizzle? Maybe mine stuff from the atmosphere? There'd be one rule: don't look down, and don't breathe in. Two rules. Don't look down, don't breathe in, and don't tease the jellysquids. Three rules. I'll make orbit again.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC