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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."
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.
Hmm, I was thinking those words were gonna be: selective breeding.
Until that works out, I suggest we focus on telescopes and probes, rovers, and those things that float in seas of frozen methane. Also as a way to reduce our carbon emissions by using lower weight vehicles.
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.
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."
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.
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.
If they come home, dealing with people whose immune systems have been compromised isn't exactly a new or unexplored problem.
Actually, yes...
There are two basic possibilities here:
1) low gravity enhances microbe growth. -- Eh, probably not enough in itself, since the microbial balance would probably still be roughly the same.
2) if the environment is made too sterile, it actually encourages pathogens, which are normally kept largely in check by other microbes. This is actually the root of the problem with hospitals and resistant infections today, to the point that some are considering returning to a less-sterile general environment. -- Easily solved; just don't sterilize the equipment in the first place. In short, maintain the diversified natural microbial population, to discourage overgrowth of pathogens.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
The ISS is a worse environment. Sure some things have been replaced regularly. But on the other hand, the ISS has been active for somewhere around 10 years now, far longer than any proposed Mars craft. Microbes have plenty of places to thrive for ten years. And we have prior MIR and Skylab experience as well. None of these indicate any microbe problem of this sort.