[HN Gopher] Space anemia
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Space anemia
Author : feross
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-01-14 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| DrammBA wrote:
| Definitely makes you wonder how dependent the human body is to
| gravity.
|
| Would be interesting to run these tests on different groups
| experiencing varying degrees of gravity, on a spinning station
| perhaps, and see what's the minimum amount of gravity we can get
| away with while keeping side-effects to a minimum.
|
| Long term tests would also be very valuable, 1-2 years.
| bena wrote:
| Gravity is probably the big one as it is the hardest to
| approximate in space, but we're likely dependent on a lot of
| stuff that exists on Earth. We evolved to live on Earth. Earth
| may not be particularly suited for life, but what we consider
| life may be particularly suited for Earth.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| There may be processes that use gravity to either sort proteins
| or concentrate chemicals. I can't think of much else, besides
| hormone response to stress caused by gravity.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Scott Kelly spent a year on the ISS while his twin brother Mark
| stayed on the ground for comparison studies.
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Kelly_(astronaut)
| ginko wrote:
| I really feel like it's high time we try a rotating wheel space
| station to see if the artificial gravity fixes problems people
| develop in zero gravity.
| dwohnitmok wrote:
| My impression is that a rotating wheel space station, while
| theoretically well within the grasp of current engineering
| ability, would be _extremely_ expensive given that we 've
| never done it before.
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| And that it's big and heavy.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| These guys are planning to fly a prototype in 2023.
| https://orbitalassembly.com/
| xwdv wrote:
| Not a doctor but perhaps we can give astronauts some sort of
| coagulants.
| pgt wrote:
| Aren't blood cells made in our bones? If yes, it seems reasonable
| to assume that anything which affects bone density would also
| affect blood cell production, no?
| 420official wrote:
| The post contends that there's an increase in destruction and
| not a decrease in production.
| kderbyma wrote:
| probably the EM field of the earth causes the blood to polarise
| in the correct way for iron to work properly
| viburnum wrote:
| Eventually people will come to realize that humans don't belong
| in space.
| detritus wrote:
| Eventually people will come to realise that humans don't belong
| above 36degN.
| toss1 wrote:
| If we don't get a handle on climate change, that statement
| will be that humans don't belong below 36degN (and 36degS)...
| detritus wrote:
| That too, which is why we need to get crypto-mining off-
| planet, stat!
| boringg wrote:
| We are completely off the rails on climate already. Best we
| can do is mitigate the full extent of the damage but our
| politicians can't quite pull it together.
| eps wrote:
| Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting
| perspective.
|
| Is there a "fast fix" for treating anemia? Because if humans do
| get there and land on a surface, this _will_ probably be
| required.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Anemia is just one of a myriad of problems humans would face on
| a Mars trip. My chief concern, and the one that's probably
| hardest to tease out, would be the psychological stress.
| There's no escape pod, no truncated emergency schedule, no one
| to greet you on the other end, and potentially not enough work
| to keep you busy. These conditions are hard if not impossible
| to replicate on earth.
| skulk wrote:
| If stress is such a problem, then why not just sedate the
| passenger? Some forms of sedation can be quickly reversed as
| a last-ditch effort if there's a problem that the
| computer/mission control absolutely cannot solve.
| 420official wrote:
| Astronauts on the space station work out nearly every day
| for several hours to stave off atrophy and still have
| issues. Leaving someone sedated for months in a zero G
| environment would make the atrophy far worse.
| _tom_ wrote:
| > These conditions are hard if not impossible to replicate on
| earth
|
| Really? Where have you been for the last two years?
|
| On the other hand, it does fully supports your hypothesis
| that the psychological stress will be huge.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The majority of people who had prepared for the 2020 snap
| study elected to drop out after only a few weeks. Science,
| and humanity as a whole, are worse off as a result.
| RavingGoat wrote:
| It seems like death row inmates would be a good comparison
| group.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting
| perspective.
|
| It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the
| idealized Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes ~8.6 months, but
| reality is both a lot more messy and more amenable to
| optimization.
|
| Just to take this year's launch window as an example:
|
| The absolute lowest launch Dv trajectory is about 390 days, at
| 3.73km/s. This is obviously unworkable.
|
| However, if you limit yourself to the lower, faster half of the
| porkchop plot, you'll find that the lowest Dv trajectory is
| ~200 days, at 4.3km/s.
|
| If you are willing to spend 5km/s, you can bring the trip time
| down to ~150 days.
|
| And if you have a fully retanked starship in orbit
| (assumptions: 250t mass at burnout including payload and
| landing fuel, 1200t tanks, 365s average Isp. These are very
| conservative, and will probably all be improved upon before any
| trip to mars is realistic.), which nets you 5615m/s, you can
| push that down to 130 days.
| bena wrote:
| Anemia isn't a disease in and of itself, it's a symptom of
| something else. You don't treat anemia, you treat what's
| causing the anemia.
|
| From reading the article, we don't know why it's happening. So
| we don't know how to treat it yet.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| EPO is a medication that increases the number of red blood
| cells.
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