[HN Gopher] Scientists re-emerge after a year in Mars simulation...
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Scientists re-emerge after a year in Mars simulation project
Author : _____k
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-07-07 08:44 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
| lintalist wrote:
| CHAPEA Mission 1 Egress Event
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNezVXznaHQ
| polairscience wrote:
| I've been following these efforts closely. For these projects,
| crewed endurance space efforts, I strongly believe the most
| difficult component is the human. It's really difficult to be
| isolated in a high stress environment. And we don't adequately
| simulate or study what that might truly be like. I know that this
| was about nutrition but I just don't think nutrition is going to
| be the hard part of these missions.
|
| I say this with experience. Living and working doing science in
| the Arctic and on ships is grueling. It's grueling, and not
| anywhere near as difficult or unpredictable as being in space.
| The things that happen in that pressure cooker are really hard to
| explain to people who haven't lived it.
|
| It's not ethical or easy to do the kinds of simulations that
| would actually be useful. How do you simulate "your colleague is
| gravely wounded and on life support. now you have to work for 90
| hours straight to fix whatever mamed them". Oh, also, you have 9
| months of mission left with one less crew.
|
| It was mediocre at best but "for all man kind" highlights just
| how weird things might get in these places. The only analogous
| efforts I can imagine are the adventures of sea-fairing people of
| centuries past. Maybe we should invent time travel and do some
| sociological studies.
| yayr wrote:
| there is this review of "for all man kind"
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7772588/
|
| why should it be any different on mars than on earth?
|
| > This show has a cool premise, that being what if the space
| race never ended. It's a sort-of alternate reality and it does
| a good job of weaving in actual historical events with where
| the timeline diverged. The main problem is that I feel like the
| show is being pulled in two directions. In one direction, there
| is the tension of the space race, engineers scrambling to be
| the first on the moon/mars and dealing with all manner of
| technical issues in a realistic-ish way. That part of the show
| I enjoy. Then, for some reason, the show also throws in a bunch
| of trite interpersonal drama and stupidity. Like inter-marital
| affairs, people leaking NASA secrets to the soviets, and a
| CLEARLY unstable drug-addicted astronaut being given solo
| control of a super important mission. It's like the showrunners
| thought the show couldn't stand on it's own without dumb drama,
| as if there couldn't organically be issues and drama in the
| context of Frigging SPACE. The first season does this better,
| but by the 2nd/3rd seasons most of the issues come not from
| unforeseen difficulties of life on the moon/mars but idiots. It
| really makes me wonder if they just aren't sure who their
| audience are. The people who like the technical stuff are not
| going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a
| lane, show, and stick with it.
| basementcat wrote:
| I would argue that sometimes "dumb drama" is a good mirror of
| humanity. Inter-marital affairs really do happen (including
| in the highest levels of public policy as well as the
| astronaut corps), people do disclose "secrets" and pilots
| (including astronauts) are known to deceive medical
| professionals to avoid being "grounded".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak
|
| https://www.space.com/spacex-employee-lawsuit-sex-
| discrimina...
|
| https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2019/04/30/after-video-of-
| sp...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-
| pilot...
| exe34 wrote:
| Where there are humans, there will be dumb drama. It's
| practically a law of human nature.
| nxobject wrote:
| My other favorite example of dumb drama at the highest
| levels: ex-director of the CIA, David Petraeus, was forced
| to resign after being caught by the FIB in an extramarital
| affair with his biographer. [1] You'd certainly think that
| the ex-military head of a spycraft organization would know
| to be a little more disciplined... and less vulnerable to
| blackmail.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal
| jowdones wrote:
| My expectation is the exact opposite, CIA chief would be
| a libidinous drug addict, but my view has been shaped by
| this character:
| https://americandad.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Bullock
| Filligree wrote:
| The drama isn't even done that well. Like you say, it's
| stupid; the people are on average just worse than the sort of
| people who would actually be there.
|
| I wanted the technical sci-fi to be worth it, but it wasn't.
| There really isn't much catering to an engineer audience.
| polairscience wrote:
| As somebody who has spent a lot of time with high-quality
| academically pedigreed humans in far out places, I assure
| you that they're very capable of dumb drama. And, again tho
| I hated the show, everyone will be watching just as they
| were in for all man kind.
| yayr wrote:
| maybe it should be mandatory to watch all episodes of
| "Big Bang Theory" on a trip to mars for educational
| purposes ;-)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| People have many facets of intelligence, and no one hits
| them all across the board. Where there are blind spots,
| there will be drama.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > The people who like the technical stuff are not going to
| like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show,
| and stick with it.
|
| I like the show as-is. Maybe I'm not in love with every
| single subplot but in general the show is pretty great. IRL
| people have motivations that drive them to do greedy,
| irresponsible things -- even astronauts.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _It 's really difficult to be isolated in a high stress
| environment._
|
| Mars seems more like a high boredom environment. It's a dead
| planet where nothing more than the occasional feeble dust storm
| happen.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > Mars seems more like a high boredom environment.
|
| Something tells me that the first few thousand people sent to
| Mars won't be bored. There will be _tons_ of things to do in
| the pursuit of making a habitable space.
|
| Besides that, you have the constant death factor. I know we
| all live with risk 24/7. But, unless we're doing something
| outside our comfort zone, our brains largely ignore it.
| Living on Mars will not be like that for a settler. There are
| real risks that some piece of equipment will fail and kill
| you all. You'll likely be well aware of that because you'll
| be working on it. (Or worse, that idiot over there holding
| the spanner the wrong way is working on it.)
| russfink wrote:
| Should we pursue such a simulation in an undersea
| environment instead? Real stress, real risk, real isolation
| - but could pull someone up if super urgent. Would also
| simulate the long voyage to get there.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| That might be a good idea _if_ space suits are available.
| It would be risky, tbf.
| whyever wrote:
| Analog astronauts are already doing this.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| >but could pull someone up if super urgent
|
| This is the key, IMHO. We've simulated such things as
| human isolation and closed-loop ecologies before,
| numerous times. And we did learn some things. But I don't
| think there is much you can do, and surely not anything
| ethical, that would correctly simulate being _months away
| from Earth_.
|
| Just as you said, when you're on-planet, anything that
| goes wrong can be dealt with. Have a leak you can't fix?
| Someone just had a medial issue and is unresponsive? You
| just can't take it any more? Whatever the case, help is
| just a press of the red button away. I'm not sure if
| you've played many video games on Hardcore mode, but it's
| a totally different experience to know your saved game
| file(s) are in jeopardy if what you're about to do goes
| south. I would imagine the feeling is somewhat like this,
| but worse.
|
| A lunar base might simulate it. An undersea base (as you
| suggested) might work too if you put it deep enough. But
| again, you're entering unethical territory here by making
| something exceedingly dangerous just for the sake of
| increasing the risk/stress.
| ETH_start wrote:
| Mars' environment is extremely hostile to life, with no
| breathable air, temperatures more extreme than what's found
| in Antarctica, and no water or food resources that can be
| foraged. As if all this were not enough, radiation levels on
| its surface are also 20 times higher than what's found on
| Earth.
|
| Adding to the difficulties imposed by the harshness of the
| environment and the paucity of its resources, a habitat there
| will be more remote than any human habitat that has existed
| in centuries, perhaps in history, in terms of difficulty of
| resupplying it.
|
| Simply surviving without the vast support network of
| civilization at hand is a constant struggle on Earth, and all
| of this will be exponentially more challenging on Mars.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I think humans living on Mars is a complete fantasy,
| at least in this century. Will humans visit Mars? We'll
| probably attempt it. But living there permanently? Not
| going to happen.
| ETH_start wrote:
| It would certainly be difficult, but if we do manage to
| create viable permanent settlements on Mars that would
| massively expand the space where humans can live, since
| it would require significant upgrades in a whole suite of
| technologies necessary for human colonization of
| extraterrestrial environmens.
|
| Even a technology as seemingly unrelated to Mars
| settlement as autonomous robots I believe would see
| significant advances as part of any effort to create a
| permanent human presence on Mars.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Best case, the technology will allow us to continue to
| live on a warmer earth, which will still be vastly easier
| than living on Mars.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You make a good case for why being on Mars is dangerous.
|
| My point is not that it's safe, but that there isn't much
| to _do_ there, and very little unforeseen happens.
|
| I assume no one goes to Mars without the resources to live
| safely and feed themselves. If we're talking about some
| adventurers hijacking a Starship, I fully agree that
| they're in for a world of stress :)
| quotemstr wrote:
| Just like Phoenix suburbs --- yet they allegedly support
| life.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Trying to survive and dealing with the inevitable crisis
| situations that will come up (critical life support machinery
| breaks down etc) and the efforts to actually establish a
| colony will make life far from boring. After 100 years yeah
| maybe.
| nxobject wrote:
| It's a little bit unfair to say that this mission was just
| about nutrition - apparently there were simulated stressors,
| although I wish there were more details about what there. That
| being said, you're right to say that people weren't being
| pushed psychologically to the "real" limit that you'd get on
| long-term isolated missions... I guess that's where The Right
| Stuff of ye olde Space Age comes in.
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/chapea/about-chapea/
| somenameforme wrote:
| Colonization will entail a pretty large population of people
| across all fields of expertise. You will also have all supplies
| and materials necessary for any sort of contingencies. You're
| not going to have the electrician trying to improv as a doctor.
| I think it's highly probable that many people will die, but not
| in particularly grueling ways, but far more mundane. Around 600
| people have gone to space (which I'll define as at least LEO).
| During this (including training), about 30 people have died. A
| death ratio of 5% is ridiculously high, and most of the
| incidents have been far from remarkable. Fire in a capsule,
| oxygen valve failure, heat shield failure, don't use solid
| rocket boosters, and so on.
|
| It'll be the same stuff with Mars, except the death ratio will
| likely be substantially higher. It'll again be from just
| incidents that will look stupid in hindsight. And they will
| have been, but when you're working to prevent a billion bad
| outcomes, a few will always manage to wiggle through the
| cracks. All things considered I think Mars colonization will
| probably be far easier than the guys who were engaging in
| civilization building in the past. Settlers in times past were
| dealing with hostile natives, hostile waters, unknown diseases,
| unpredictable weather, even mundane things like rats getting
| into your rations, and had very little ability to measure or
| adapt to what they were dealing with. For instance Vasco de
| Gama (Europe to India guy) took 3 weeks to cross the Indian
| ocean the first time. On his way back, it took 3 months. By the
| time he returned, about 70% of his crew was dead.
|
| Colonizing Mars will be absolutely brutal but we will have
| quite far fewer unknowns. Of course the issues will will have
| to deal with will be far harsher than anything anybody else
| ever had to manage, but they are known - and so that really
| simplifies the process.
| 9dev wrote:
| People arguing in favour of mars colonisation always kind of
| skip the time between _now_ and a future in which we're able
| to ship an entire populace to another planet.
|
| We _will_ need to send smaller crews first. Not just to do
| the science and validation necessary, but also because it
| would be plain unethical to send a large group of people
| without knowing what effect that kind of travel will have on
| them. And all of that in spite of knowing how that venture
| would even be technologically feasible.
|
| If you haven't, I can highly recommend reading _A city on
| mars_ by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Well this is literally the point of Starship, so the
| timeframes are probably quite a lot closer than many may
| realize. And due to the extensive amount of labor involved,
| a fairly large group will be absolutely necessary. But I'd
| emphasize that colonizing Mars, or anywhere, will likely
| literally never be safe, and no amount of "science and
| validation" can really change that. Huge numbers of people
| still regularly die in the most mundane of things, like
| roofing - where about 1 in 2000 workers lose their lives
| per year. Over a career of a few decades, those are some
| pretty unpleasant odds.
|
| And on Mars roofing would look like the safest job
| imaginable. We're going to be doing absolutely everything
| from scratch - industry, construction,
| manufacturing/processing, and more. And doing it all in
| conditions unlike anything on Earth, and where if you're
| exposed to atmosphere - even briefly, you're dead. There's
| going to be an unavoidably high death rate. If you want to
| wait until things are safe then I think that's perfectly
| understandable. But in turn you should also understand that
| people have different perspectives on life.
| 9dev wrote:
| > will likely literally never be safe, and no amount of
| "science and validation" can really change that.
|
| This is not how engineering works. You can't just hand
| wave all practical problems away and throw adventurers
| with a death wish at them until a few stick to Mars.
|
| A single failed Starship mission with a full crew is
| going to be the death sentence for any further
| exploration of a mars colony. I would very much like to
| see this happening, but not at the cost of entirely
| avoidable deaths.
|
| Work smarter, not harder.
| tired-turtle wrote:
| The settlers were ipso facto the hostile group, as they were
| settling another people's land. Otherwise, we'd call them
| visitors.
|
| (edit) My intention wasn't political correctness but that
| words are important. "unwanted" is more fitting than
| "hostile," as it matches the intention of the settlers.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " All things considered I think Mars colonization will
| probably be far easier than the guys who were engaging in
| civilization building in the past."
|
| Those explorers of eras past were going places that not only
| sustained ample plant and animal resources (in quantities
| that would surprise modern people) but entire human
| populations. There is almost nothing on Mars that will
| sustain us.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Not entirely. I'd look up things like the 'Starving Time'
| at Jamestown. [1] Jamestown lost 90% of its population in a
| single winter, and was left resorting to cannibalism and
| other such things. In the past you were constantly
| preparing for winter. And if something went wrong, either
| with your crops, water, surprise weather, or whatever else
| - you died. And that's if disease, natives, weather, or a
| million other issues didn't get you.
|
| And that's _after_ you got there. Crossing the sea meant
| you were completely subject to the whims of the weather,
| often sailing into the literal unknown, all the while your
| rations were slowly dwindling and your crew was starting to
| rot from the inside out dying rather unpleasant deaths -
| scurvy wouldn 't be entirely resolved until the 20th
| century! With Mars we won't really have to deal with any of
| this, because the issues and variables will be _mostly_
| known ahead of time, and the supplies per settler will also
| be dramatically higher meaning a far greater window of time
| to reach self sustainability.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starving_Time
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Jamestown is notable because of the deprivation, not
| because every settlement was a Jamestown. Certainly, we
| understand the variables and an identical journey on
| earth would be dramatically safer (though still not
| without peril).
|
| Even still, these explorers were able to harvest
| resources during their journey as well as immediately
| upon arrival at the destination.
|
| With Mars, there's nothing there. No fertile soil. No
| potable water. No known life. It's an actively hostile
| environment. Colonizers to Mars will be exceptionally
| reliant on carrying the totality of their survival
| resources. Sure - if we spend the next centuries
| terraforming Mars robotically (or some other scheme), we
| could change the math on this - but I have a hard time
| swallowing the argument that crossing to, and colonizing,
| Mars is anything but orders of difficulty harder than the
| feats of those explorers. I'm a nerd and want to believe,
| but it's fanatical thinking for... a long time.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Consider it this way - I would say that scaling Mt.
| Everest now a days is relative easier than it was for
| early adventurers and explorers to scale far lesser
| mountains, in the past. Of course Everest is far more
| difficult, yet modern supplies, knowledge,
| sherpas/guides, and more have enabled even 80+ year olds
| to scale it. It's still a huge achievement nonetheless,
| but modern competencies have really enabled us to
| minimize the dangers. Though of course there's still
| substantial danger - many people find their final resting
| place there.
|
| And I think it will be similar on Mars. What is being
| done is, itself, far more difficult than what was done in
| the past. Yet in this case we have a far better idea of
| what we need to do, what we will be facing, and so on.
| There will be unknown unknowns, and those will get people
| killed, but I think the frequency of such unknowns will
| probably be quite a bit lower, which I would claim makes
| it overall "easier."
|
| In the past even "just" doing a transatlantic crossing
| was basically accepting that a good chunk of your crew
| weren't going to make it. In the early Age of Sail, you'd
| be lucky if you were left with half your crew. The grand
| explorers like Magellan fared even worse. For his
| circumnavigation, he left with 5 ships and 270 men. "He"
| returned with one ship and 18 men, a 93% death rate. "He"
| in quotes as he was not one of those 18.
| accrual wrote:
| I found this quote from the article especially heartfelt. To me
| it doesn't just convey a hopeful message, it also shows the
| attitude and inner strength of someone who just endured the
| closest thing we have to living & working on a new frontier. It's
| a powerful message when read through that lens.
|
| > "We can do these things together," Brockwell said. "We can use
| our senses of wonder and purpose, to achieve peace and prosperity
| and to unlock knowledge and joy for the benefit of everyone in
| every part of planet Earth," he added.
| yayr wrote:
| I could not really find a TLDR or dive into the mission
| results... Is there something already?
| timonoko wrote:
| I bet they did not give even a minute thought about the people
| who live and die in tiny boxes on desolate icefields. There was
| weird customs and rules to make this life possible, as for
| example Peter Freuchen documented.
|
| This should be the starting point, imho. Those cultures were
| honed in 10000 years just for Mars survival perfection.
| oersted wrote:
| A lot has been written by and about Peter Freuchen. Could you
| provide a more specific reference for these customs and rules?
| I'd like to read-up on it.
| timonoko wrote:
| I read the "Vagrant Viking" fifty years ago. And the book was
| probably heavily censored in translation because ungodly
| family habits. So I am not sure where I got all the ideas
| from.
|
| There was somebody else married to eskimo too, interesting
| because he made an Umiak suitable for outboard engine.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| It's still an order of magnitude more chill off a life than
| Mars. You're surrounded by drinkable water and breathable air
| and some critters to hunt
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also how simple it is to remove yourself from some situation.
| Something is getting on nerves. You can just put on some
| clothing and walk outside. Stand there for 15 minutes or half
| and hour and get to decompress... No such opportunity on
| other objects...
| HPsquared wrote:
| Browsing the modern web would be a nightmare from Mars, with a
| 30-minute ping and all the HTTP back-and-forth that modern pages
| require.
|
| I guess you would have to use an Earth-based remote desktop.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| That would still have a 30 minute ping. You should just have a
| Martian Internet and then sync up the two every few hours or
| something.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Probably not possible for the first several years, with
| limited bandwidth. Maybe they could use sneakernet for
| periodic updates.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Most internet traffic will be predicted/generated by AI by
| then, so they'll only need to send a few tiny deltas.
| gruez wrote:
| >You should just have a Martian Internet and then sync up the
| two every few hours or something.
|
| the "internet" is just a network of computers. "sync up the
| two" would involve replicating the servers and coming up with
| some sort of consensus protocol. Needless to say, that's non-
| trivial to implement and needs to be done for each site
| individually. If there was a martian colony it might be
| economically feasible for some sites to do this, but if it's
| just a few astronauts the most feasible way of implementing
| internet browsing would be something like archive.today,
| where you send a url to some server on earth, the server runs
| a headless browser and takes a screenshot, and sends the
| captured contents back to mars/spacecraft.
| ironhaven wrote:
| The question is whether it will be like Usenet with nntp or a
| BBS with xmodem
| thfuran wrote:
| It would have a 30 minute ping for rendering, but all the
| round trips required for loading the page would be a few
| orders of magnitude shorter.
| hughesjj wrote:
| With a fat enough pipe and big enough cache web browsing could
| be doable with push based caching.
|
| Counterstrike or zoom meetings? Not so much.
| supersparrow wrote:
| Maybe one day we'll see relay stations in space. One spaced
| every x miles transmitting the internet from earth. Ping should
| be minimal.
| lolinder wrote:
| Cannot tell if /s, but just in case this was serious: light
| takes between 3 and 22 minutes to travel from Mars to Earth
| and back, which means that ping cannot be less than between 6
| and 44 minutes depending on orbits.
|
| Robust caching would help but still be nothing like what we
| experience on Earth (particularly the interactive portions of
| the web like, say, HN).
| withinboredom wrote:
| You forgot to include the fact that there is a point where
| mars is behind the sun, which makes for a period where the
| ping will be ~2 weeks.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Relay stations at a third location would fix this.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) communications are used all
| the time with satellites and other relays so people can
| communicate with others outside their immediate LOS. You
| need relays that extend the visibility of the planets
| with respect to each other. This is non-trivial, but not
| much harder than the work already going on to land things
| on Mars that requires (or desires) comms back to Earth.
| thfuran wrote:
| The delay is from the time of flight of light between Earth
| and Mars. Relays can only add additional processing time
| without shortening that, though they could potentially help
| with signal integrity. You also can't just freely place a
| relay between earth and Mars and have it stay between them --
| both planets are orbiting the sun and the relay also would
| be, with a period that doesn't match either planet.
| binary132 wrote:
| I choose to interpret this as humor. Funny joke! I laugh.
| jrnichols wrote:
| ...only to run into a page that drops a nasty overlay on your
| browser window because you have Adblock enabled.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I have been thinking recently that Mars and maybe the Moon
| would need to use asynchronous messages. Basically, email but
| with multiple message types.
|
| For browsing the web, they would send a message requesting a
| page, and get back the messages for the page in 30 minutes.
| They would probably send a request for whole site instead of
| round-trips for links.
|
| This means that interactive JavaScript sites would never work.
| There would need to be way to download app or web app that
| could send messages to update state. Or way to install local
| server that can sync with Earth.
| the8472 wrote:
| Buffering... please wait
| skellington wrote:
| Logging in to your bank account to pay the Mars mortgage would
| take like 4 hours.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| You just need Martian internet infrastructure and banking.
| Those institutions can sync balances with earth based banks
| later behind the scenes.
| pseingatl wrote:
| How much law do we take with us? marslegalcode.org
| cubefox wrote:
| One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS
| operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g
| pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals. Zach/Kelly
| Weinersmith mentioned this in an interview with Sean Carroll on
| Mars colonization: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM
|
| If it turned out that mice can't properly reproduce in the zero-g
| environment of the ISS, it would be very likely that (much
| heavier) humans can't properly reproduce in the low-g environment
| of Mars. Which would be a very important thing to figure out.
| Perhaps more important than the mostly psychological Mars
| simulation project.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > One thing I don't understand: In over two decades of ISS
| operation, there apparently was never time to do a zero-g
| pregnancy experiment on mice or other small mammals.
|
| Coincidentally, I was looking for research into zero-g
| pregnancy myself a few days ago and was surprised just as you
| are. I did, however, find https://www.audubon.org/news/the-
| amazing-story-cold-war-spac.... The Soviets did some good
| research on this subject and were able to successfully hatch
| birds at least.
| cubefox wrote:
| Interesting. Here is more detail on how those Soviet quail
| experiments went:
| https://finchwench.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/cosmoquails/
|
| Unfortunately, the chicks often came out deformed and many
| died early. Though birds are not closely related to us (our
| last common ancestor lived more than 300 million years ago),
| so I really would like to see ISS experiments on whether mice
| fare any better, or perhaps even worse.
|
| Overall, I'm pessimistic about colonizing Mars. In the
| interview mentioned before, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith also
| mention other problems, like the necessity to live
| underground in caves, due to radiation. Building an
| underground city on Earth would be vastly easier than on
| Mars, yet nothing like it has ever been tried.
|
| I think the most likely thing that will happen is this: In
| about 20 years, NASA will use Starship (a SpaceX rocket
| currently in development) to send a few US Americans to Mars,
| they will plant the flag of the nation, and, having beat the
| Chinese, that will be mostly the end of humanity's Mars
| aspirations.
|
| Basically like the moon missions: Once the novelty is gone,
| people will likely lose interest in earlier aspirations of
| establishing a permanent base. Especially if the ISS mice
| turn out crippled.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I actually did the math on the Mars problem a little while
| ago. It wouldn't be _that_ hard to build a big circular
| railway on Mars that would let the cars experience 1G.
| (Maybe a few hundred meters diameter?) Think giant luxury
| Gravitron.
|
| You'd stop the train every few days to allow for resupply
| and entry or exit. It'd certainly be a different society in
| which pregnant women were expected to sequester themselves
| in high-G trains for the duration of their pregnancies, but
| there's no law of nature stopping this approach working.
|
| Also, we don't know the shape of the function mapping
| deformity to gravity. We just have two endpoints: 1g,
| normal; 0g, deformed. Maybe 0.2g is sufficient to reduce
| deformities below the noise floor? We need to get a sense
| of the shape of this curve, preferably using mammal models.
| cubefox wrote:
| Unfortunately deformities might not just develop during
| pregnancy but during the entirety of childhood. Even if
| the risk is gone after birth, building countless circular
| railways could be too expensive, or unappealing to women
| who may prefer not to have children over using this thing
| for several months.
|
| The point about the function of gravity and deformity is
| valid. More realistically, both gravity and mass of the
| organism are likely to influence deformities, since
| animals with larger mass are impacted more by gravity.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I recommend the book A City On Mars, which covers many aspects
| related to the feasibility of traveling to and colonizing Mars.
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