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Astronaut Scott Kelly Describes One Year In Space -- And Its After Effects (brisbanetimes.com.au)
53-year-old astronaut Scott Kelly shared a dramatic excerpt from his new book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery in the Brisbane Times, describing his first 48 hours back on earth and what he'd learned on the mission:
I push back from the table and struggle to stand up, feeling like a very old man getting out of a recliner... I make it to my bedroom without incident and close the door behind me. Every part of my body hurts. All my joints and all of my muscles are protesting the crushing pressure of gravity. I'm also nauseated, though I haven't thrown up... When I'm finally vertical, the pain in my legs is awful, and on top of that pain I feel a sensation that's even more alarming: it feels as though all the blood in my body is rushing to my legs, like the sensation of the blood rushing to your head when you do a handstand, but in reverse. I can feel the tissue in my legs swelling... Normally if I woke up feeling like this, I would go to the emergency room. But no one at the hospital will have seen symptoms of having been in space for a year...
Our space agencies won't be able to push out farther into space, to a destination like Mars, until we can learn more about how to strengthen the weakest links in the chain that make space flight possible: the human body and mind... [V]ery little is known about what occurs after month six. The symptoms may get precipitously worse in the ninth month, for instance, or they may level off. We don't know, and there is only one way to find out... On my previous flight to the space station, a mission of 159 days, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained and shrank the walls of my heart. More troubling, I experienced problems with my vision, as many other astronauts had. I had been exposed to more than 30 times the radiation of a person on Earth, equivalent to about 10 chest X-rays every day. This exposure would increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
Kelly says the Space Station crew performed more than 400 experiments, though about 25% of his time went to tracking his own health. "If we could learn how to counteract the devastating impact of bone loss in microgravity, the solutions could well be applied to osteoporosis and other bone diseases. If we could learn how to keep our hearts healthy in space, that knowledge could be useful on Earth." Kelly says he felt better a few months after returning to earth, adding "It's gratifying to see how curious people are about my mission, how much children instinctively feel the excitement and wonder of space flight, and how many people think, as I do, that Mars is the next step... I know now that if we decide to do it, we can."
Our space agencies won't be able to push out farther into space, to a destination like Mars, until we can learn more about how to strengthen the weakest links in the chain that make space flight possible: the human body and mind... [V]ery little is known about what occurs after month six. The symptoms may get precipitously worse in the ninth month, for instance, or they may level off. We don't know, and there is only one way to find out... On my previous flight to the space station, a mission of 159 days, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained and shrank the walls of my heart. More troubling, I experienced problems with my vision, as many other astronauts had. I had been exposed to more than 30 times the radiation of a person on Earth, equivalent to about 10 chest X-rays every day. This exposure would increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
Kelly says the Space Station crew performed more than 400 experiments, though about 25% of his time went to tracking his own health. "If we could learn how to counteract the devastating impact of bone loss in microgravity, the solutions could well be applied to osteoporosis and other bone diseases. If we could learn how to keep our hearts healthy in space, that knowledge could be useful on Earth." Kelly says he felt better a few months after returning to earth, adding "It's gratifying to see how curious people are about my mission, how much children instinctively feel the excitement and wonder of space flight, and how many people think, as I do, that Mars is the next step... I know now that if we decide to do it, we can."
help! i've fallen and i can't get up!
It is possible that the first several generates to go in to space will never be able to come back to earth.
Not the best idea. You need arms to get around in space.
People that are just missing legs might make sense.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You mean shrinkage?
Not hard to produce gravity. And you can still have a weightless bit in the middle for fun.
That said, astronauts are obsolete technology. Robots can do it cheaper and better.
increased risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of your life...
versus
not having to listen to the moron in chief nor hear about his twitter shit posts for a year
sign me up
Has NASA done any in-space studies of artificial gravity from centripetal force (or is it centrifugal?)? Many books and movies have done real-studies on rotating sections (2001, Rendevous on Rama, O'Neills space colonies, etc...). Even some pretty good math support on how long the lever arm has to be vs rotation speed.... I don't know how they would attach it to ISS, but it sounds like some kind of testing should be done.....
It's purely an issue of cost. To produce rotational artificial gravity, you need a fairly large lever arm (otherwise the gravitational gradient is rather large, which means your head feels less gravity than your feet and... well, I'm not sure what the effects of that would be, but I can't imagine it would feel pleasant), which means you need a ship far large than you can launch into space in one go. You could build/assemble it in space, but that's difficult and expensive. Finally, you can't add something like that to the ISS: if it breaks or goes wrong, you'd basically destroy the ISS, which would be very very bad (the ISS costs a few tens of billion USD, and the potential debris cause by an accident could cost tens of billions more).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
A proposed solution for deep space missions (to Mars for example) is to send 2 ships at once, tether them using a long cable, and have them spin around each other like a pair of bolas. Instant gravity without a lot of extra weight (though building a ship for spin of say half a g does add weight too), and you can make the cable a lot longer than any arm, which helps with the coriolis effect.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I would argue that he *should* go to the E.R., or see a doctor for the pain at least. There are doctors that have seen at least one of the 533 people that have been to space. I bet you NASA has the number to a few of those doctors too.
Good advice, I'm sure it never dawned on this NASA Astronaut that he should see a NASA physician after returning to earth, the first thing he did when he landed was probably to hop out of the Soyuz and catch an Uber home and go to bed like the slacker he is. Probably never even occurred to anyone at NASA to have him see a physician. Sounds like they should have just talked to you.
There's lots of things we can do that we aren't doing because of the cost. We could be building a vehicle right now that would send a man to Mars at the 2024 launch window. But we're talking about at least 10+ years after that for a good reason: nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to have the kind of program where you could commit to an actual date for a mission. But we are willing to spend enough to kick the can down the road roughly in the direction of Mars.
Same goes with engineering systems. It would be great to have a non-rocket launch system that could put stuff in orbit. That would save a ton of money on a per-mission basis, but nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to even start seriously looking at a space elevator or sky hook.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A rare type of Dwarfism.
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff...
Probably sending a high-altitude balloon would have accomplished the same thing for 1,000x less spending...
And then just raise its orbit to get it out of the atmosphere and accelerate it to a stable orbital velocity and keep it in free-fall like the ISS (around 17,000mph) and you're there!
Though you'll need a bigger balloon to carry the hundreds (thousands?) of tons of rocket needed to get it into orbit.
I think you've just reinvented the Rockoon, which is still being pursued, but not, afaik, for large payloads like a space capsule that can support a human.
Spacers gotta be spacers. it's a religion. Don't try reasoning with him.
There's lots of things we can do that we aren't doing because of the cost. We could be building a vehicle right now that would send a man to Mars at the 2024 launch window. But we're talking about at least 10+ years after that for a good reason: nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to have the kind of program where you could commit to an actual date for a mission. But we are willing to spend enough to kick the can down the road roughly in the direction of Mars.
Same goes with engineering systems. It would be great to have a non-rocket launch system that could put stuff in orbit. That would save a ton of money on a per-mission basis, but nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to even start seriously looking at a space elevator or sky hook.
There are some useful intermediate steps that would also make a Mars mission much more realistic and affordable, though they are likely decades away -- like the ability to mine nearby asteroids for fuel and other supplies (like water, which could be turned into fuel). Getting 5 tons of fuel into geosynchronous orbit would take around 250 tons of fuel using today's rockets. Getting that fuel from a space based asteroid could be much more efficient. Even getting it from the moon would be better than getting it from earth, but even the moon as a sizable gravity well to launch out of.
Not just cost, but also operational complexity / opportunity for failure.
If you make two "gravipods" and tether them, theoretically they can spin and achieve whatever force you want on the occupants - longer tethers mean lower RPMs for the same force, but no matter how you configure it the whole thing has to be stronger to withstand the forces, and docking with something spinning like that isn't nearly as easy as 2001 made it look.
I agree. I'm just pointing out there's a world of difference between imagining some system built and operating and imagining how to get it built and operating, and the differences start with where you're going to get the money.
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Of the 15 people that have spent more than a year in space does not constitute a statistically significant sample size
Oh really? What, pray, is the statistical test you are using to determine a sufficient sample size?
Seriously, don't play that card if you can't back it up.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
tldr;
* only 40% of missions have actually succeeded, i.e. not crashed
* microgravity will render astronauts helpless. I.e., unlike earth, there won't be anybody at the destination to carry you off on a stretcher and treat you back to health. (Bone loss and vision changes/glaucoma, low blood pressure, T-cell reductions). You need a rotating setup for centripital gravity.
* a piece of rock the size of a beebee can wreak enormous damage to the ship; think Apollo 13
* radiation; a solar flare would be fatal to astronauts.Van Allen belts mostly protect against charged particles. If a flare hits a mission outside the Van Allen belts, the astronauts will die eventually, unless the mission carries literally tons of lead shields. The moon missions were lucky to not get hit. A Hohmann transfer orbit takes approx 6 months to get from earth to Mars (or visa versa). You will get hit by solar storms
If we could get an "ion-drive" to get us there in a month, that will cut down the the bone loss, and exposure to radiation.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I find the idea that we can change so much to be intriguing, not a problem so much as a sign of opportunities. It makes me wonder if anyone has ever researched the changes that would occur in an environment with increased gravity.
What would happen if you were to put an athlete in a huge centrifuge and gradually increasing the "gravity" for a year prior to the Olympics? You'd probably have to get them out a few weeks early so that they could relearn dexterity in our lower environment, but the increase in strength throughout their system would likely last for months.
The first intermediate step which we are fully capable of doing is creating a much larger space station to use as the jumping off point for other missions into the solar system. The most expensive and dangerous piece of manned space travel is getting out of the gravity well. We have enough available lift capacity to move construction supplies, man power, and the supplies need to support human life.
That sounds like an expensive and wasteful way to prepare for space travel to an unknown destination and unknown timeframe with a spacecraft of unknown design. What supplies do you send? How do you know they'll be useful 10 years from now when you're ready to use them?
You could send water and assume it'll be used for *something*, but if you find a way to get it from an asteroid (or from the moon) you may have wasted a lot of fuel and space launches when you could have been launching aluminum I-Beams for construction. Oh, but when you're ready to build your ion-jet spacecraft, you find that you've launched beams that are much too heavy for the task. Or you're using hydrogen-oxygen engines and now you've found that you underestimated the strength needed.
The most expensive and dangerous piece of manned space travel is getting out of the gravity well
Launching those supplies ahead of time doesn't make it easier to get out of the gravity well. Finding the supplies you need outside of the gravity well does.
Actually scientists would love artificial gravity as it would solve all sorts of problems for them. What's preventing this from happening is that the engineers haven't been able to come up with a practical, economic way to create a centrifugal module.
But maybe that's just because they haven't consulted you yet. You should contact NASA and let them know you have the answers.
Haven't you seen the movie WALL-E?
Exactly what I was thinking; they just need better hamster wheels. Maybe they can license the technology from the Gravitron at a local carnival.
My understanding is that a practical device for achieving simulated gravity with spinning would need to be very very large. Otherwise, any people moving around would feel terribly sick. I believe this is known as the Coriolis effect.
Good idea, now how many plants have you successfully grown in space? How many will you need for a contained biosphere?
Good questions. Here's some more, vis à vis gravity:
How much gravity does a person need? Can we get away with 1/2 G? 1/4 G? 1/8 G? Do they have to live in it or can they visit it? Could they sleep for 8 hours in 1 G and be able to work/live for 16 hours in 0 G with no ill effects? How about the opposite?
These are all great questions. And what I wonder is why don't we have any answers to these questions?
According to Wikipedia, 536 people have been "in space" and we "have spent over 29,000 person-days (or a cumulative total of over 77 years) in space."
But nobody has tried to answer these questions?
Maybe instead of trying to train ants to sort tiny screws in space, we could actually look into some of these questions?
A better idea than most think. Not only can your spinning contraption create gravity, but also create a protective Magnetic field around it.
I don't know why but this quote always stuck with me...
Sex. Drugs, and Unix.
I just keep wonder why NASA has this fixation on trying to do space in weightlessness? Why not use centrifugal force to simulate gravity...
Because the ISS is specifically for gaining experience with the effects of zero-G, of course. We need to know whether all astronauts suffer the effects described here after long periods, or some subset. We need to know what durations are required for which effects to show up. It's science.
And the effects Kelly describes are for the most part adaptations to microgravity. When you first go into zero-G your blood rushes to your head because your vascular system has spent a lifetime squeezing it out of your legs. Kelly describes becoming adapted to this in space and then having blood pool in his legs upon return, while the body readjusts to its old habits. How long does this take after X months of weightlessness? These are the questions ISS is designed to answer.
When we do start using rotating habitats to simulate gravity, will we need a full G? Will the lunar or Martian constant suffice? Will a rotating gym or dormitory inhabited part of each working day suffice?
Well, back when Larry Niven's Ringworld became popular, some engineering students actually did the math based on Niven's own description of the fictional ring, and concluded that the Ringworld was not stable around its star. Niven later integrated those stability problems into the plot of future Ringworld novels.
Would a circular station like in 2001 or an O'Neill Cylinder like Babylon 5 actually be as stable as we all assume? Would there have to be movable masses located around the perimeter that could be shifted to account for internal mass movement of people and materials? Would it simply make more sense to have a craft on a long tether, tied to a counterweight on the far end, the whole thing tumbling as it travels? The latter solution probably would be a poor one for a close-orbiting station but might make for a good interplanetary craft, where the counterweight could be machinery or supplies that are useless during the transit but would be essential on arrival. Such a craft would probably need a winch to pull the tether in and bring to two halves together, that winch itself could be in the counterweight part to help ensure that there's sufficient mass for the system on a return trip that presumably has shed a lot of the original mass.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This has to be a troll.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I know that replying to you is to an extent playing into your racism and xenophobia, but you do realize that if you regularly send only a particular racial group like South Asians out into space as a matter of regular colonization and settlement and do so fully expecting them to adapt and be capable of living and working in those conditions, that the group that you profess so much hatred for will be the most successful racial group in human history, having been the only group to successfully colonize space and move beyond Earth...
Hell, they may be the only racial group to survive the eventual end of a habitable Earth, the only humans left in the universe.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Its a huge materials science issue. Hell, they had to design an entire special system to be careful to not shake the ISS apart when riding the stationary exercise bike on board. To build a craft that could stand up to the sheer forces of spinning it up to even partial ( >1G) will reqire incredibly strong materials, which probably means prohibative costs and weights. Until you can print space station size carbon nanotube structures in orbit, aka, buzzword salad, spin-gravity is probably a dream.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Yep. And what separates reality from sci-fi isn't just what is physically possible. It's often what is financially possible.
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not true, solution is easy, solved decades ago. You have giant hollow ring and spin it. NASA knows this too. It's a money problem.
Luna is the key to getting off this planet.
1) We master fast, safe travel to and from Luna. Think some kind of cross between Space-X and the Shuttle and Apollo LEM. Maybe something like Space-X takes you to IIS, then you board a Shuttle to Luna orbit, then a sturdy LEM departs the cargo bay or top half, and lands on Luna surface then can take-off back to Shuttle leaving nothing behind, then Shuttle travels back to IIS, then Space-X back down to Earth while Shuttle stays in orbit.
2) We establish a permanent colony on Luna. Dig down and use Lunar rock to shield from radiation. Build large loops underground that centrifuge up to 1G for normal living. Learn hard lessons of living off Earth, but with not too horrible 4 day return if needed using technology in Step 1.
3) Build Space Elevator - it is possible on Luna with existing materials and technology. Very hard if we have to ship the materials up, but we may find what we need on Luna.
4) Use Lunar resources to build large interplanetary vessel powered with ion drive in Luna orbit with the Elevator. Step 3 is huge, but this will make Step 3 look like a picnic. It would have to have enough shielding to keep radiation down to earth normal levels, rotate to simulate 1G for living, and be able to make the trip to Mars, or elsewhere, and back without refueling, and carry it's own Space-X, or two, for landing on the surface and taking you back up to the ship and all the fuel that requires.
5) Make permanent colony on Mars using lessons learned in Step 2. Dig down to shield. Centrifuge to 1G for living. Etc.
We get to Mars eventually, but we learn how to get there and how to live there by doing it on Luna first. Next would be in the Asteroid Belt on some minor planets. Or perhaps turning large asteroids into space stations. Lots of possibilities once you know how to get this far.
I was under the impression that because the Ringworld was a ring, any perturbations in its orbit would destabilize it gravitationally relative to the star, and once part of it got close enough, gravity would pull it into contact with the star.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I suppose that's part of why I speculate on cables, winches, and two distinct structures. We can already build cables strong enough out of steel, and we can build platforms that can handle considerable weight (ie mass and acceleration) upon which to build habitats or cargo containers that themselves would be more like terrestrial buildings in the direction of force they would have to withstand.
Sometimes I wonder how much equivalent to gravity would be necessary to forestall degradation of the body, versus the engineering cost compared to engineering for 1G to achieve it and to launch it. Would 0.5G be enough? If not, 0.6 or 0.7? Do the engineering, materials, and launch costs come down when engineering for 0.5G or 0.7G compared to 1G?
In this case good engineering is not about making a perfect solution, it's about making a solution that's the least expensive while being satisfactory. The analogy of building bridges works, just about anyone could probably design a bridge that's strong enough, but it takes real talent to build a bridge that's just strong enough. That's what we should be considering here.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is reality for space habitation. The easier option is to colonize the seabed. It is much closer, requires the same kind of technological investment and developments, and has easy access to water for drinking and breathable air production. It also has a much more practical economic motive with the methane hydrates literally sitting there, no intensive mining required just collection and transportation. Space utilization is still the best for understanding the universe and improving communications technology, but humans have better places to spread to first. Especially in terms of extinction events, a seabed colony has better odds than a space-based or martian/venusian colony. There is real physical geological evidence that 90%+ of all life has been wiped out in the past, but what survived was on and just underneath the seabed. That is the best place for our survival also.
What "incredibly strong materials"? You think we can't make a rope that carries 100-200 tonnes of load or so? Why would you need "space station size carbon nanotube structures" for that?
Ezekiel 23:20
The problem is that the Ringworld was rigid, which was necessary to spin it fast enough keep the atmosphere in. An airtight cylinder should work fine.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
if you regularly send only a particular racial group like South Asians out into space as a matter of regular colonization and settlement and do so fully expecting them to adapt and be capable of living and working in those conditions
That's what Japan is for, first we nuked them, then their reactor blew, now the North Koreans are going to misfire onto them, another 3-4 rounds and we'll be able to isolate Human-compatible radiation resistant genes to splice into everyone. The first step to space colonization is irradiating the fuck out of the Japanese.
All spacecraft are spun or use spinning reaction wheels for stability. Heck, I've had to do weight and inertia calculations to insure the major or minor inertia axis of a spacecraft aligns with its designed rotational axis. If they don't line up, it will tumble. Rotation is a very well-understood problem which has been and is already tackled and used aboard every satellite, space problem, and launch vehicle we send up into space.
The practical problem isn't one of designing or building a centrifugal module. It's of building a spacecraft large enough that the occupants could use a centrifugal module without throwing up. If the radius is too small, you get disorienting Coriolis effects when someone jogs around the interior circumference (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey). The head traces a smaller circle than the feet, resulting in a centrifugal force differential, causing the body to lean from "vertical" in order to remain upright while moving. Basically, we haven't yet needed to build a spacecraft large enough that a centrifugal module wouldn't suffer from these effects.
Rather than a rotating wheel, the more interesting design is a living quarters capsule connected by a long tether to a counterweight (or if you want, a second living quarters capsule). This is considerably smaller (and cheaper), but could be used to generate artificial gravity in the living quarters. The problem here is one of maneuverability - since it's a tether instead of a rigid structure, you can't make course corrections. You'd have to first slow down the rotation, reel in the counterweight, make the course correction, then play out the counterweight, and start both ends rotating again.
1) No such word as "centrifical". Please define.
2) Please provide evidence for this "need" beyond your childhood sci-fi and comic book collection.
Here's a tip:
www.distancetomars.com
Nope, we should send a newborn, since he never experienced 1G (from day 0).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Do you know who Scott Kelly is? He is in unique position sharing his experience in space. Why? Because his brother, Mark, whose also an astronaut, stayed on Earth as a control subject. Statistically speaking, how many people have unique position as Scott and Mark?
There's lots of things we can do that we aren't doing because of the cost. We could be building a vehicle right now that would send a man to Mars at the 2024 launch window. But we're talking about at least 10+ years after that for a good reason: nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to have the kind of program where you could commit to an actual date for a mission. But we are willing to spend enough to kick the can down the road roughly in the direction of Mars.
Same goes with engineering systems. It would be great to have a non-rocket launch system that could put stuff in orbit. That would save a ton of money on a per-mission basis, but nobody wants to spend the kind of money it would take to even start seriously looking at a space elevator or sky hook.
we sure don't mind pay unnecessary and outrageous salaries to incompetent bureaucrats
I'm betting on the Shadows myself.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That is a good point.
Come to think of it, if a craft were designed correctly, it might even be useful for reintegrating Martian visitors back to Earth at the end of the trip, by starting with Martian-average gravity and slowly increasing it until about 3/4 of the way it's up to Earth-average. Make it gradual and maybe it'll be easier.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Of course there is no "anti-gravity" but there is a way to create gravity...centrifugal force.
This is so well know I won't even explain it. The engineering has already been done on this at NASA and it's not really that big of deal, although it calls for a more expensive, complex and larger space craft.
It is obvious than humans were not designed for a weightless environment and longer space missions to Mars or anywhere else will require a rotating work/living space.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
... you've never seen Japanese movies and hentai, I guess. Continue irradiating them like that and you get Gozilla and tentacle monsters with a fixation on school girls.
#DeleteFacebook
We are not tourists on the Earth. We ARE the Earth! We are not the moon. We are not Mars. We are not anywhere else in the universe. We are made to live nowhere else. Period. All this space travel and "colonization" enthusiasm is naive and deadly. It is also immoral to support loudly or quietly a belief in space that can only lead to the horrible deaths of numerous people.
E Proelio Veritas.
Forget astronauts. How about we experiment on mice or something? Maybe if the ISS had something like, oh, I don't know, maybe a Centrifuge Accommodations Module we could start answering questions like that.
The pipe dream that we're going to float all over the solar system, hop out on zero-G weakened legs, and explore the surface of another world for 6 months.
We're probably going to have to wait until we've developed rotation spacecraft. And, this WON'T be trivial because the Coriolis (?) effect means you have the make the spacecraft sufficiently large for humans to adjust to the rotation. Spinning an upper stage of a Saturn V won't do it.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I wonder whether a hundred years from now people will be shaking their heads and saying, "I can't believe people were allowed to go into space without active shielding from ionizing radiation." ...kind of like we shake our heads today after reading about how people worked with microwaves in the 40's and 50's or with x-rays half a century prior to that.
Absent a fundamental breakthrough in propulsion technology (i.e., really energy generation tech), shielding spacecraft with 3 cm to 5 cm layers of lead, thorium, etc. seems impractical if getting from Point A to Point B within a reasonable amount of time is a desired outcome. We'll have to develop active shielding tech that mitigates exposure not only to photons in the x-ray and gamma ray range but also relativistic sub-atomic particles. Not easy.
We have perfect data on what 1g does to a person. Following extended ISS and MIR missions, we have pretty decent data on 0g - and the answer is that it slowly kills us. But we have literally no data WHATEVER on what 0.17g (moon) or 0.38g (mars) does to us.
Is that enough gravity to avoid 100% of the problems in 0g? Does it actually have ALL of the problems of 0g?
We really have no clue.
Given the nature of orbits and getting to Mars and back, you either have to stay for no longer than 2 weeks - or you have to stay for an entire year. If we send people to Mars for 2 weeks - after 6 months in zero-g flight - and with another 6 months of zero-g to get home again - the effect on the crew will be within the range of adverse conditions that we've seen for 12 months in zero-g (VERY BAD!), regardless of what 2 weeks at Mars gravity does to them. But if we send them for an entire year - then they could easily be anywhere between dead and fully healthy when they head home.
The 2 week mission provides us with no information whatever. The second approach is REALLY dangerous. If Mars gravity is no better than zero-g then the astronauts will have had 2 years of inadequate gravity...and they may well end up dead. We have NO CLUE what 2 years of inadequate-gravity does to people.
So what we NEED to be doing - as a matter of urgency - is sending a spinning 1/3rd g artificial gravity environment into orbit and sticking some astronauts inside it for months at a time. All we need is a reasonable sized crew compartment (Hi Bigelow guys! This is your thing!) and a decent counter-weight with a strong cable between them. All the crew have to do is live there and exercise daily. Heck, I bet we could find people who'd pay millions to do it.
This is actually a MUCH more important thing to know than what we'll gain by sending people to Mars. It determines whether mankind has any kind of future at all in space or whether it's robots all the way.
None of the efforts to get people to Mars appear to have that anywhere in their mission plans...which is crazy!
www.sjbaker.org
Ugh, what the fuck happened to Slashdot?
you've found that you underestimated the strength needed.
Nonsense!! MOAR STRUTS!!
It's not the zero G that's a problem, it's the lack of oxygen. I'd be surprised at a mutation that lets us get by without air!
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
The other problem with spinning ships is being able to look outside. Who knows what the psychological impact of seeing a spinning universe all the time would be. If you had a ring ship with tubular spokes and a center vessel, you theoretically could have a window at the axial center and counter spin to see a 'still' universe. But that is a whole lot more complex than a cable counterweight setup.
For a three tubular spoke setup, you could have balancing weights that could move in or out along each of the three spoke tubes for wobble stabilization.
Thank You for that.
I swear at this pace they are going to start teaching the flat Earth theory in U.S. Schools.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
The planet where NASA has never received an appropriation to build and fly centrifugal-grav space stations, professor.