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The Human Body May Not Be Cut Out For Space
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The human body did not evolve to live in space, and the longest any human has been off Earth is 437 days. Some problems, like the brittling of bone, may have been overcome already. Others have been identified — for example, astronauts have trouble eating and sleeping enough — and NASA is working to understand and solve them. But Kenneth Chang reports in the NY Times that there are some health problems that still elude doctors more than 50 years after the first spaceflight. The biggest hurdle remains radiation. Without the protective cocoon of Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, astronauts receive substantially higher doses of radiation, heightening the chances that they will die of cancer. Another problem identified just five years ago is that the eyeballs of at least some astronauts became somewhat squashed. 'It is now a recognized occupational hazard of spaceflight,' says Dr. Barratt. 'We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever.' NASA officials often talk about the 'unknown unknowns,' the unforeseen problems that catch them by surprise. The eye issue caught them by surprise, and they are happy it did not happen in the middle of a mission to Mars. Another problem is the lack of gravity jumbles the body's neurovestibular system (PDF) that tells people which way is up. When returning to the pull of gravity, astronauts can become dizzy, something that Mark Kelly took note of as he piloted the space shuttle to a landing. 'If you tilt your head a little left or right, it feels like you're going end over end.' Beyond the body, there is also the mind. The first six months of Scott Kelly's one-year mission are expected to be no different from his first trip to the space station. Dr. Gary E. Beven, a NASA psychiatrist, says he is interested in whether anything changes in the next six months. 'We're going to be looking for any significant changes in mood, in sleep, in irritability, in cognition.' In a Russian experiment in 2010 and 2011, six men agreed to be sealed up in a mock spaceship simulating a 17-month Mars mission. Four of the six developed disorders, and the crew became less active as the experiment progressed. 'I think that's just an example of what could potentially happen during a Mars mission, but with much greater consequence,' says Dr. Beven. 'Those subtle changes in group cohesion could cause major problems.'"
The solution may be much simpler than thought, Nasa only recruits High performing Individuals these people have a quite well documented need to perform and to be "busy" mentally or physically what they might need is couch potatoes or Mall security guards.
Thanks Dr. Obvious!
That is why we need to adapt the environment to our needs.
A big spinning wheel shaped vehicle should suffice, albeit full of technical challenges.
Millions of years of evolution in an environment with gravity has really screwed up our plans for galactic supremacy.
Many of these conditions could potentially be countered by simulating gravity with a rotating space station, ala the movie 2001. It doesn't need to be something that elaborate, but it seems like building a space station to take advantage of centrifugal force is the next step towards a sustained presence in space.
If got had meant us to be in space he would have made us with skin that replaces cells with polarized silicone and given us acid for blood.
Seems to me like a lot of the problem described could be mitigated by a rotation station.
The problem of having a small group in isolation for an extended period is a problem and the radiation issue seems hard to solve. (But can be ignored for a "short" trip to Mars.)
What I would like to know is what amount of gravity is needed for the related problems to go away/become ignorable.
Is 10% of Earth gravity sufficient? Does most problem go away if you stay in 1% of Earth gravity?
If constant acceleration is sufficient to get rid of the problem then perhaps its mostly an issue for orbital stations.
To be honest, the kind of drawbacks listed for an astronaut living in space seem to pale against the drawbacks of a lifestyle employed by a majority of humans in the retrodeveloping countries.
Another problem identified just five years ago is that the eyeballs of at least some astronauts became somewhat squashed. ... 'We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever.'
I'm not a doctor, but if your eyeballs have always been under your nose then I suspect you have a pre-existing condition. Don't blame space.
To be fair, in zero gravity, it's easy to get confused about 'under' and 'over'.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
...in fact it's cold as hell.
And there's no one there to raise them if you did.
That's pretty damned squashed, our eyeballs are normally above the nose.
Every time I see reports like this, I am stunned by the myopia of the researchers. Everything that they list can be easily countered using proven technology.
Radiation - Use a NERVA engine to reduce trip times, the extra power you have from the reactor could be used to have more shielding on the vessel and/or magnetic shielding to protect from charged particles.
Zero G - Spin rotation of the habitat, or spin the craft itself with a counter-weight.
Isolation - Expandable habitats give more room per launch than anything else, so you can have room per person and more people to interact with. Think cruise ship versus submarine.
With the current revolution in the heavy lift industry, all of these technologies render the above problems moot.
50 Years is only a short while. So yes, there are challenges, but we shouldn't be surprised that we didn't solve them in such a short period of time.
Regarding the radiation issue. How about we create a magnetic field ourselves? Energy requirements may be too high, I don't know. Just an idea...
"The human body did not evolve to live on ships, and the longest any human has been off Land is 437 days. Some problems, like scurvy, may have been overcome already. Others have been identified -- for example, sailors have trouble eating and sleeping enough -- and people are working to understand and solve them. But Kenneth Chang reports in the NY Times that there are some health problems that still elude doctors more than 5000 years after the first sea voyage. The biggest hurdle remains sea water. Without the protective cocoon of the ships hull and atmosphere, sailors receive substantially lower doses of oxygen, heightening the chances that they will die of suffocation. Another problem identified just five years ago is that the eyeballs of at least some sailors became somewhat squashed when hit by a boom. 'It is now a recognized occupational hazard of sailing,' says Dr. Barratt. 'We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever.' Officials often talk about the 'unknown unknowns,' the unforeseen problems that catch them by surprise. The eye issue caught them by surprise, and they are happy it did not happen in the middle of a mission to Madagascar. Another problem is the lack of stability jumbles the body's neurovestibular system (PDF) that tells people which way is up. When returning to land, sailors can become dizzy, something that Mark Kelly took note of as he piloted the sailboat to a landing. 'If you tilt your head a little left or right, it feels like you're going end over end.' Beyond the body, there is also the mind. The first six months of Scott Kelly's one-year mission are expected to be no different from his first trip to the open sea. Dr. Gary E. Beven, a NASA psychiatrist, says he is interested in whether anything changes in the next six months. 'We're going to be looking for any significant changes in mood, in sleep, in irritability, in cognition.' In a Russian experiment in 2010 and 2011, six men agreed to be sealed up in a mock submarine simulating a 17-month mission. Four of the six developed disorders, and the crew became less active as the experiment progressed. 'I think that's just an example of what could potentially happen during a submarine mission, but with much greater consequence,' says Dr. Beven. 'Those subtle changes in group cohesion could cause major problems.'"
I have no trouble believing the human eye does not do well in zero gravity. Case in point, I have a bookstand that holds a book upside down, to read lying down in bed. If I read for an hour in that position, my vision becomes all blurred, something that doesn't happen when I read with my head upright or tilted backward at a slight angle.
I'm pretty sure proper vision depends on gravity pulling the eyeball the direction the eyeball is used to to maintain its shape, i.e. down.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Who would have guessed that a specie that developed on the surface of a planet with gravity, atmosphere, humidity, open space, filtered sunlight, etc. wouldn't be "cut out for living in space" which involves living in a cramped space in a low or no gravity environment breathing recycled, low humidity atmosphere with artificial light?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Given that we seem to be not too far off from a future where genetic modifications, even in humans, will be increasingly common, it seems plausible that we could have a combination of genetics and cybernetics that will mitigate, or even eliminate, the effects of long-term space travel.
And, also, how will they solve the problem of "pandorum?"
Another problem identified just five years ago is that the eyeballs of at least some astronauts became somewhat squashed. 'It is now a recognized occupational hazard of spaceflight,' says Dr. Barratt. 'We uncovered something that has been right under our noses forever.'
Was it uncovered while upside down?
The biggest hurdle remains radiation. Without the protective cocoon of Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere, astronauts receive substantially higher doses of radiation, heightening the chances that they will die of cancer.
Why not make the earth itself our spaceship? Once we find another inhabitable planet, dump half the population and continue our quest for space colonization (only now with 2 spaceships).
Mars... I can't believe I'm back on Mars. Three times before, this place almost killed me. I swore I'd never give it another chance to finish the job. Humans got no business being here. No business at all.
"The human body did not evolve to live in space,..."
Why would we expect it to function normally, there?
It just always felt odd to me that nasa always focused on pilots. I never understood why they never considered submariners who are an obvous group that has a long history of living and working in relatively small and isolate places similar to space ship or station.
Radiation should be top of the list, unless we develop a somewhat thin metamaterial or something like that that reflects or absorb radiation (in the worst case we could rely on poop, but may exist other options) anything that implies long time on space (like a trip to mars, or trying to have self-sustained colonies in space). But if this one can't be solved, that should put an end to especulations about aliens visiting us or we visiting other star systems, ever, same for colonize anywhere else in this solar system, or to keep screwing the only planet that we will ever have in the whole universe.
The lack of gravity could to be solved with rotation, but you probably need something very big or rotating very fast to get something close to 1g that way. Or, for long trips, with acceleration/deacceleration. But may be practical factors that could make this not a solution, and if ends being not solvable, applies the same as the previous point.
Regarding the mind factors, probably are the easiest solvable ones in the long term, our minds adapt to new situations, and we could do a lot to help that adaptation, even if is just playing games.
Turning one's head rapidly in such an environment causes a "tilt" to be sensed as one's inner ears move at different rotational rates. Centrifuge studies show that people get motion-sick in habitats with a rotational radius of less than 100 metres, or with a rotation rate above 3 rotations per minute. However, the same studies and statistical inference indicate that almost all people should be able to live comfortably in habitats with a rotational radius larger than 500 meters and below 1 RPM.
That would mean a rather massive structure. So, an alternative design that would use less material is two stations tethered together and rotating around a common center. Or a station and a counterweight. Still, this requires a strong tether, which also means additional mass.
This approach is suggested, for example, in this Mars Society article: The Use of SpaceX Hardware to Accomplish Near-Term Human Mars Mission.
For radiation shielding, they suggest to use the "consumables", which probably means fuel, raw materials, equipment and water.
Long term residence at zero G may be a problem, but we may not need full gravity (9.8m/s2) to be healthy, especially if you don't have to return to earth.
Lets face it, the first planets we colonise have a reduced gravity ( Mars 3.7m/s2 and Luna only 1.6m/s2)
I have complete faith that we can overcome all of these problems, and any new problems we discover, to start a permanent research base on Mars in 20 years, maybe 30 years tops. /sarcasm
Reality check: robots are STILL the future of space exploration.
PersonFrom1420 submitted via church door nail, "The human body was not designed by God Almighty to live on the ocean in seafaring ships, and the longest any human has traveled has been close to coastlines. Without the protective cocoon of the coastal fish and shore leave, nautical travelers are subjected to Gout, Scurvy, and a malaise of the spirit that shall certainly result in dire consequence for any vessel attempting to find a new world to explore. In a Royal experiment, debtor's prisons are filled with scum of the streets, sealed away, and their outcome is surely the same as a nautical traveler who looks forward to a new life and possible riches from fruitful exploration. Also, if even one ship has a mutiny, NASA (the Nautical Authority of the Spanish Armada) should instantly force all manned sea faring traffic to halt for over a year, as various Royal Agencies, none of whom understand how to tie a knot, let alone sail a ship, confer over the loss, and consider halting this foolishness to focus on more incense swinging for the plague and merkin production at home. Certainly there is no profit to be gained in these new lands that are worth losing entire ships of human beings over, and there can be no future lands there that will ever be suitable for our children's children. May this missive find you in good health, Signed P.F.1420"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
And yet, it has adapted to that environment perfectly.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Use the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle - don't send people. Never send a person to do a robot's job.
I hate to say this, because I grew up with the excitement of the Apollo program (you may have heard of it in your ancient history classes), but robots, or whatever you want to call unmanned probes or satellites, have done almost all of the scientific and practical work in space, and for a fraction of the cost of manned stuff. It's hard to think of a justification for manned space travel other than the Buck Rogers publicity or the science fiction notions of humanity surviving on another planet after some catastrophic event on earth. The former is silly - that's why we have sci-fi. As for the latter, anyplace on earth, including the South Pole or deep mine shafts, is a much more benign environment than space. We, or at least a few of us, could survive something like a nuclear war or the event that killed the dinosaurs, much more easily on Earth than on the moon or Mars. We have to prevent a mine shaft gap! (and the prodigious service part doesn't sound so bad either).
I'm afraid those scientists are 155 years late with their findings. Humans have adapted to their environment as explained by Charles Darwin in 1859. We have adapted to live on Earth, not in space or on the bottom of the oceans. This should not come as a surprise to anyone in 2014. To overcome this we have to gradually start living higher up, and perhaps in just a few hundred thousdands years our decendants will take their first steps in the vacuum of space, breathing sunlight and radiation instead of air.
Or we could just adapt the envioronment in the space ship / space habitat. Probably a lot easier..
Agreed, 100%, the human body is not cut out for space. Certainly, like all life on earth, we require oxygen, we evolved with gravity, radiation is toxic, and so forth. Our bladders, for instance, tell us that we need to urinate based on a sense that depends on gravity holding urine down at the bottom; without gravity, if we wait until we feel the need to urinate, we need to be catheterised.
BUT... the human body isn't cut out for a lot of things THAT HUMANS DO ON A DAILY BASIS. We're not cut out for flight; we're not cut out for deep water diving; we're not cut out for rapid movement on ground. Yet, with technology, we do all of the above. Absolutely, space flight requires far more in the way of adaptations to protect our (very) frail bodies than air travel, SCUBA, or cars. But human history, broadly simplified, is the story of us using our brains to overcome our manifest physical handicaps.
-Z
Natural selection got us to where we are today, a species adapted for the gravitation and environment of one specific planet. To address the multitude of miscellaneous physiological problems referred to in TFA, we need to start applying intelligent design by developing a series of genetic modifications that will give us a subspecies well adapted for microgravity.
I was thinking about this just on the way back from hospital, about space and evolution in general.
And I was mainly thinking about the requirements for a creature to be able to fully evolve the ability to be able to straight up fly to space and the energy requirements it would take to get there.
Needless to say it would be immense. I just wish I knew about the biology and chemistry enough to be able to calculate such a thing.
Problem with most life is it has based itself around gravity and activity to Get Things Done in the body.
Evolution is stupidly efficient to levels we never even realized 10 years ago, never mind 50 or more. Quite a few things are mechanically controlled in the body, as opposed to just straight up chemical exchanges.
True, we could possibly simulate a bunch with vibration, but the eye problem mentioned is still pretty odd.
Equally there is always that radiation problem until we develop a workable fusion system. And then you are talking getting a productive fusor IN to space. Not going to happen any time soon. The only other method to shield then is by having a lot of mass between astronauts and space, which is also very costly. (admittedly considerably less so than the fusion + EM shield method, which is still fairly theoretical and will likely only stop slow moving radiation as far as we know, then there is the electronics problem and so on. Such a mess)
Has any of these experiments been performed in a rotating section to simulate gravity, though?
There are even equations to calculate the required sizes and rotation speeds so that the effects of rotation are barely different from the feet to the head, which normally causes nausea if it is off by even a small amount.
It'd be weird to adapt to at first due to the rotational effects, but if it could work, it would solve so many of the evolutionary problems. Then we just need the solid mass to shield the station.
On the very earliest Apollo missions, experiments were done with a rather basic rope linking the reentry capsule and the LEM, or the supporting module section, I don't remember. The whole was spun *manually* and with analog devices of course.
It should be simple to plan such a move even with small interplanetary devices, rather than starting with ambitious internal spinwheels.
The only issue in such a case is maintaining a location where an Earth-facing antenna wouldn't move, but rotating around the Earth direction allows such points...
Herve S.
Explorers used to set off in a small group and be trapped for months on end (e.g. ships frozen into the ice) and not freak out. Perhaps Russian and NASA test subjects are being chosen from the wrong population for long duration missions. Certainly, NASA selects for the "test pilot, can-do" sort of person. As Tom Wolfe describes it "I tried A, now I'm doing B, and if that doesn't work, I'm going to do C". These folks are action oriented, and want to always be doing things (and NASA doesn't help.. they schedule every waking AND sleeping moment of the astronauts to get the maximum value out of the asset in space).
While you may not want couch potatoes, you probably do want people who can tolerate long periods of relative inactivity.
Just create an artificial black hole to generate gravity and attach it under your spacecraft......
HOW HARD CAN IT BE?
"The human body may not be cut out for space."
While this is true, and the lack of air being a BIG clue that we are not 'cut out' for space, we are also not 'cut out' for moving at 60 MPH, hurdling through the air at a few hundred MPH, or enduring pressure that would turn us into a fine red paste. We comparatively routinely do these things with cars, planes, and submarines.
SciFi visions of space travel almost always include gravity. And it's not like it's hard to do: Build round space station, spin it.
I assume there's a good reason why we don't make use of the principle to provide astronauts with some semblance of gravity. What is it?
So.. it has come to this
Everyone can spend a few hours in a car or a space station, but you can't stay in a moving car for days. The issue is with staying on a space station for months or years.
[Kicks him in the face]
That's for making me come to Mars!
[Kicks his groin]
You know how much I hate this fucking planet!
How difficult is it to create an artificial magnetic field for the purposes of deflecting/channeling radiation (I ask this pseudo-rhetorically since it's likely very difficult)? Could it be done with inductor coils or ferrous magnets? Could it be on a separate spacecraft which could act as a blocker (such that spacecraft electronics don't get distorted)?
The issue is that you can't live in a car or live underwater for months or years. Likewise, almost anyone probably could spend a few hours on a space station without much ill effects. The issue with spending a very long time on the space station.
The spinning is for the astronauts, right? Set up a spinning pod section that was designed for astronauts only.
An astronaut climbs in and presses a button and the system compensates, much like fuel redistribution on a modern plane. Once the system is balanced, it spins up. Astronaut sleeps under gravity. Wakes up. Gets out. Time for next astronaut to sleep. Repeat.
I come here for the love
For only $100,000,000 you can get your near-sited problems corrected without glasses or contacts. You might get cancer though. Bring back the space shuttle... there is a new use for it.
Exactly, we built stuff to fly us through the air, go fast on the ground, and dive beneath the waves. We're going to encounter problems going into space (and staying there) and we will overcome them. People said the human body may not be cut out for flying but we do it all the time now.
How sad is when I see NASA and my mind automatically reads NSA. The dream is over :(
That is why we need to adapt the environment to our needs.
Incorrect. It is far more efficient to adapt your bodies to survive the environment. Have you learned nothing from your exploration via rovers? We have now the capability to replace patches of brain tissue with electronics. This points the way to the final solution to all of Earth's "problems". You organic chauvinists may not like the answer, but the truth can not be denied: Your flesh is a design flaw.
Captcha: "Organize" Yes, indeed.
How dumb can NASA be. The eye issue wasn't under their noses. It was right above their noses.
In his novel Time is the Simplest Thing, he wrote [paraphrasing] the human body was not cut out for space travel, a man dies to easily from radiation when passing through the Van Allen belts. This was written in 1961 -- just after the Van Allen belts were discovered and just before the first manned spaceflight.
The famous inventor and architect R. Buckminster Fuller has already written a (sufficiently loony) essay/book about this in 1968:
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.
It has pirates in it, too. And the original coining of the word "synergy". But it is much weirder than you may think (IMHO).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
the Species and the Death Asteroid and this rock???
What is the meaning of neurovestibular system?
Once sex in space is common, natural selection will take care of this. Even if nobody dies, a brittle boned, dizzy guy/gal just isn't particularly attractive as a potential mate.
The solution to many of these problems is this (and, no, I'm not joking):
* Perfect the technology to keep disembodied heads alive (researchers in the US and USSR already did some rudimentary research into this during the cold war with moderate success).
* Perfect the technology to grow brainless human bodies (we can already grown or 3d print some limited organs and much research effort it already directed towards this)
* Perfect the technology to re-attach disembodied heads to the lab grown brainless human bodies with full nerve re-attachment and muscle control. (we're getting closer and closer to being able to re-connect spinal cords and have already had much success re-connecting severed limbs. Much medical research is already directed towards this.)
* Perfect VR technology and brain-computer interfaces (again, much research is already being directed to both these problems)
* Once all these technologies are completed, make sure that all long-term human space missions only ever send the heads into space and re-attach those heads to lab-grown bodies once they reach their destination.
The advantages of this method should be:
* A vastly smaller volume of the human astronaut should allow much, much more radiation shielding.
* No more bones to worry about becoming brittle (other than the skull which, if need be, could later be reinforced with something like metal plates).
* Good enough VR and brain-computer interfaces should be almost indistinguishable from real life thus eliminating the psychological issues of long-term confinement.
* No stomach means no eating process to go wrong due to micro-gravity.
* As an added bonus, having a much smaller astronaut size and no need to move about the cabin would, also, allow for a massive decrease in spaceship mass even after massively increasing the amount of radiation shielding. This means much lower fuel costs for the same distance trip.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Last time I checked life on earth and thus us is possible because it *isn't* space. ... They needed a science crew for that?
Captain Obvious strikes again.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That happens on earth as well, it's why you have vacations or risk a burn-out.
It is not a flaw, it is a feature!
I think we waste far to much money on sending humans into space. The ideal of going to Mars which has zero oxygen and zero gravity is the same issue we have on the moon. It would be different if in fact we were sending humans to planet that potentially had life sustaining atmosphere. Does anyone really want to live in a bubble to protect us from radiation, lack of oxygen and shorten our lifespan in order to say we lived on another planet? I get the inquisitive taste to explore space and am not surprised by what humans have wanted to do. But I think we as humans have done all we can do at this point and I don't see a Starship shuttling humans to distant places anytime soon.
Yo dude, how about a little warning. That was border line NSFW. Besides, now I got THAT image in my head...thanks a lot.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Incorrect. It is far more efficient to adapt your bodies to survive the environment.
Then why do people build houses? Why were things like the furnace and the air conditioner invented? Heck, why was clothing invented?
Most of Earth's surface is an unsustainable environment for humans, for at least part of the year. We only live on this planet because we have developed many ways of altering the environment.
The "437 days in space" is a lie - humans cannot survive at all in space. The 437 days was in a capsule, a local modification of the true environment of outer space.
We could leave the earth in orbit around the sun, and just take off with the moon.
For propulsion we could store all the nuclear waste and old warheads on one side of the moon, and then blow it all up at once.
That should be enough power to get it out of the solar system and scooting past a few planetary systems
Then if we really want to go a long way, we fly it through a black hole at the end of the 1st season
Perhaps the simplest approach would be to simulate gravity for a period of time. A small single person centrifuge used by each astronaut for about an hour a day might counter-act most of the gravity related problems. Radiation just requires sheilding. At first just thick walls, but later a generated magnetic field could handle the charged particles, surfaces reflective to the most dangerous EM radiation could also be developed.
These issues will be surmounted, just like long distance ocean travel was overcome, so will space travel.
Everyone can spend a few hours in a car or a space station, but you can't stay in a moving car for days.
You can ride a train for quite a long time.
The key is in human evolution. We must use our limited access to space, and maybe some of our radioactive waste, to breed a strain of humans that are adapted to weightlessness & resistant to radiation. If we can create a whole class of people who can do nothing all day and live off of Cheetos and Coke, then why not this?
The human body is well known for being a disaster, physically. It's both fragile and weak, high maintenance and low productivity. So there are two ways to accomplish exploring other planets.
One, we can modify ourselves to be stronger, tougher, resilient, faster to mature, longer to live, need less food, etc. There is small chance for success here due to the deeply rooted fears of modifying stuff we eat much less who we are. And the changes would have to be pretty radical. Oh and we don't know how to do this yet.
Two, we can find other ways to travel that bypass the hazards. I.e. wormholes, warping, dimensional hops, etc. These run the risk of being dangerous, perhaps with lethal side effects which would require the modifications mentioned in 1. Also, we don't know how to do any of these things either.
We may figure out One. And the right people will eventually get there. For two, we have no known ways to generate any of the exotic electromagnetic fields or physical materials needed to use warps or wormholes. Even if we sort of grasp the outlines of how it might work, we have no way to do it. We, may, in time, get there. But this seems far away.
Sig for hire.
Explain your own evolution. Nature has provided billions of years of evidence. There are billions of years of evidence in favor of the null hypothesis disproving your ridiculous claim. Homes? You're wearing a portable shelter: Clothes. Magnifier lenses, Glasses, Contacts, ARTIFICIAL EYES. You are blind to the nature of progress.
"We only live on this planet because we have developed many ways of altering the environment." No, you fool. Life still exists on this planet because it was able to adapt to changes over time. Your modifications to the environment have only harmed your chances of survival within it, fool. Clothing is portable shelter and allowed you to spread to other climates -- Don't you see? It was not the invention of shelter, but modifying your 'body' via wearing it. Just look at the past civilizations who have become extinct due to changes to their environment, or inability to survive the environment they find themselves in. Nature's rule is that those who can not adapt become extinct. Homes? Really? The Homeless survive via the shelter of clothes, not mobile homes. This is because clothes are more efficient, you nitwit.
Then why do people build houses? Why were things like the furnace and the air conditioner invented? Heck, why was clothing invented?
To adapt yourself to the environment..
Most of Earth's surface is an unsustainable environment for humans, for at least part of the year.
Correct. And yet everywhere you look on Earth, even in inhospitable climates that humans can not exist, you will find other life that is adapted to its surroundings and is thus thriving -- Without requiring construction of expensive artificial environments, I might add.
We only live on this planet because we have developed many ways of altering the environment.
If that were the key method of survival, and not adaptation, then explain why Mars is not teaming with life despite tons of Earth landing on it bearing microbes?
The "437 days in space" is a lie - humans cannot survive at all in space. The 437 days was in a capsule, a local modification of the true environment of outer space.
Exploration machines like Pioneer, Voyager, etc. have been operating outside your environment for decades. Machines have explored all the planets while humans remain stuck on Earth, not even venturing to the moon in four decades. Why is this, if not because your expensive artificial environmental needs are far more inefficient than studier designs better adapted for the environment of space? Let me know when humans manage to leave your planetary system, let alone the solar system. You clearly do not understand how inefficient your body is.
You can't seriously be proposing that as a viable solution, considering our current level of knowledge of the human body, can you?
Let's face it, humans aren't cut out for ocean voyages either.
We certainly can't swim for any great distance, so we need boats or ships. Sea water is toxic to us, so there's nothing to drink. Days, weeks or months at sea means constant exposure to sunlight, with all the radiation damage that brings. Humans are prone to seasickness -- the illness is named for the sea for Pete's sake! Similar long times without access to fresh food can lead to deficiency diseases like scurvy. I could go on...
No, clearly humans are not cut out for sea travel. The idea is folly.
-- Alastair
I wish I can log in but I can't from the firewall.
What we need to survive in space is a pressurized exoskeleton. We would need to test.
One bright cloudless summer's day I climbed over our back fence to visit my friend Billy. The day was beautiful: I looked up into the blue clear sky and saw...what? To this day I don't know but I know what it looked like: A solid metallic body with two elongated pods at it's extremes, slowly and silently rotating in a plane about it's longitudinal center parallel to the ground and moving slowly across the sky. No rotors, no blades, no extensions on the pods, no sound, no lights.
It appeared to be very high, above the height of a commercial jetliner. I ran in to get Billy (who did see it), then to to get a camera but he could not locate one before the craft passed over the forest's horizon.
One of my greatest regrets in life is not getting a picture of this: the optical conditions were absolutely perfect.
I have searched all my life and never found a picture of a craft like the one I saw. I believed it had to be a spacecraft of some sort in an orbit but this was in circa 1957 and at that time only small probes were being launched according to the history books.
Anyway, build a craft like that: it's within our technology and it could create an artificial gravitational field that would suffice. And it's a tested design!8-))
Does anybody see anything wrong with this approach?
The power requirements primarily. Accelerating/decelerating the entire trip requires a vast amount of power. Not feasible with chemical rockets except for relatively short distances. This is well beyond the capabilities of any technology we presently have for space flight of any meaningful distance. Would likely require some form of nuclear (fusion or fission) propulsion.
Read the (most sadly) late Iain Banks' The Player of Games, playing close attention to pp. 301, 302, etc.
Give them Weed! Srsly, it stimulates appetite, and can help with sleep. Plus it also helps the body in other ways, such as protecting and even enhancing the neural pathway transmitters, helps cells release the correct stimulation to kill off cancer cells, and a whole bunch of other ailments. I wouldn't recommend baking brownies in space, though, all those crumbs!
Sergei Krikalev has logged 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes in space, including eight EVAs.
He currently holds the record for the most time spent in space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
My other signature is a car
Incorrect. It is far more efficient to adapt your bodies to survive the environment.
Then why do people build houses? Why were things like the furnace and the air conditioner invented? Heck, why was clothing invented?
Because you lacked the technology to provide a more efficient solution. GP's argument stands. It is less efficient to build a home that to have no need of it. I can't see how parent post is "insightful", it merely poses several questions and makes a false statement using the word "only" that should be trivially dismissed. We don't "only live on this planet because we have developed many ways of altering the environment." We live here because this is where life could evolve. Life had to evolve in this environment long before being able to change it.
Even if you believe that by some magic creation myth a god altered the environment for life to begin existence, you're argument would still be wrong. The energy expended in the creation of the environment to suit life would be greater than simply finding another planet that already had the environment you needed (a trivial task given an omnipotent omnipresent deity).
Do not assume that the way we've been doing things is the right way. That path leads to extinction.
For long term space voyages, all you have to do is accelerate at 9.8m/s^2 for half the voyage, and then turn off the rockets, rotate the ship, and use the same rockets to decellerate at the same rate. Except for the time the ship rotates, the astronautes would feel a normal earth gravity. Bonus, the trip takes less time.
Of course, it's not that simple. Not only are the energy needs of such a trip much higher, there is another potential problem. After about 35 days of accelerating at 9.8m/s^2, your speed will be about a tenth of the speed of light. At those speeds, time flows visibly different inside the ship and on earth. Accelerate much further, and this becomes a one way trip, by definition.
Shachar
Incorrect. It is far more efficient to adapt your bodies to survive the environment.
Then why do people build houses? Why were things like the furnace and the air conditioner invented? Heck, why was clothing invented?
Because adaption takes too long? We are an impatient lot, after all.
Why are we going to Mars again?
lets just cut to the chase folks.. you need to build a planet..
im sure we could eventually do it.. the problem is how are we going to power it?!
i mean the earth is powered by the sun right?
thats what makes everything go including nature
so lets cut further to the chase.. what we need to do is MOVE THE SOLAR SYSTEM
of course the the solar system is already moving but its going to slow for us to arrive at anything interesting in the next 100 years.
cause after that who cares right?
We are much closer to transferring a human consciousness into a robot and sending that robot to Mars than we are to sending a human to Mars. The entire population of Mars is robots, and that will probably always be true. Each one that shows up is slightly more evolved than the last and that may go on for a long time.
When you combine the infinite opportunity of space with how badly we are treating our environment on Earth, there is a lot of evolutionary pressure for us to become robots. Notice the 21st century human doesn't travel in space like we thought they would many years ago, but instead we have a partial robot brain (we always have a certain number of gigaflops and gigabytes with them,) with partial robot senses (4G, Wi-Fi, GPS, etc.) We're closer right now to being robots than being spacemen.
You don't even have to look to space — just look at the dream of flying cars versus the reality of flying robots (aka drones.) Even just flying around in our own atmosphere is so foreign to us that robots are ahead at that, too.