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Two Astronauts Return To Earth After Record 340 Days In ISS (technews.mobi)
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian astronaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Wednesday after spending a year aboard the ISS, conducting experiments for future missions to Mars. Mikhail Kornienko, 55, and Scott Kelly, 52, completed the longest uninterrupted period aboard the ISS since the station was deployed in 2000. Kelly, who has made four trips to the ISS, also breaks the record for cumulative time in space by an American, with 540 days. Kelly and Kornienko performed this mission to study the biological and psychological effects of long stays in space in order to prepare for future missions to Mars in 2030 or sooner. During their stay at the station, both were frequently subjected to medical examination and a battery of tests to study the long-term effects of micro-gravity on the human body.
At this point these space stunts are the equivalent of flagpole sitting.
What was not in TFS and IS important is that Scott's identical twin brother (a retired astronaut himself) remained on Earth all this time. So NASA is doing comparative studies between the two of them. This was no stunt but instead a carefully crafted experiment.
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The same boring, tiresome "research" has been done already.
Umm??? If it was already done then why did they repeat it? I certainly haven't heard of identical twins being tested like this before. Or is there some sort of astronaut pork barrel funding conspiracy I am not aware of?
OK, now what? You're gonna do it again, and again, and again, pretexting "science" when you know very well that you have your bags packed for Mars.
My bags are packed for my 3 hour drive home tomorrow, not for Mars.
Stop being a disingenuous fool. Funny how medical research usually involves animal models, you could get all your precious free-fall science from a mouse model as well. For a lot cheaper.
Yeah medical science uses animal models. But only when it is impractical or impossible or unethical to use humans. And even then animal models are only an approximation to humans. Once the animal model has run its course medical researchers turn to testing humans. So I posit that you are the one being disingenuous in saying that this research could be done cheaper with animals - because eventually they would have to send up a human in order to collect actual human data. In effect they have saved money by skipping a lot of unnecessary animal model approximations.
Oh but then you can't hero-worship Steve Austin, Astronaut, like you had on your grade-school lunch box.
Sorry, Stevo was a bit after my time in grade school. Nice try with the attempted ad-hom, but you failed in your basic research as to who I am.
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Four cosmonauts have stayed for 365 days or longer continuously in space during the 1990's. The record for the longest space flight being held by Valeri Polyakov who stayed on the Mir space station from 1994 - 1995. Russian achievements are often obscured because of the uncomparable public involvment by NASA.
See: Ten Longest Space Flights
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Wanda Says:
We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.
-- Copper, Interstellar (Movie) (2014)