On the devastating effects of a year in space | Hacker News Reader

On the devastating effects of a year in space

brisbanetimes.com.au

259 pointshunglee2130 comments

I’m a little confused why only 48 hours after his return from space, he’s sleeping at home with his girlfriend and debating whether to take aspirin or go to the emergency room. I would have expected significant medical attention for much longer than 48 hours, given that this was the primary purpose for his extended stay on the ISS.

Yea, especially given much of the purpose of his flight was to examine the effects of that long in space. I have trouble believing that NASA didn't, if nothing else, give him a phone # to call right away if he had any unexpected symptoms. The whole "should I go to the emergency room" thing kinda seems like a narrative added after the fact to add excitement to his article/book.

(not that I doubt the episode was scary, but I do doubt the fact that NASA would've left any uncertainty about what to do in such a situation)

They have on-call flight surgeon(physicians) for the Astronaut Office. This includes post-mission support.

The narrative seems like it was slightly dramatic to support the story. Similar "unusual" symptoms have occurred on previous missions with other astronauts.

Also, being a senior astronaut, he is likely personal friends with at least one of the assigned flight surgeon.

He's probably picked up a heck of a lot of expertise on basic medical stuff over the years so he can almost be his own CNA.

They probably decided that having him at home in a normal environment with a fitbit or something logging his heart rate and whatnot was better than having him in an unfamiliar hospital.

Astronauts are qualified as EMT as part of their astronaut training.

Funny I thought the same thing. Or even an in house doctor for check ups and assistance.

So it sounds like even NASA astronauts even have a crappy healthcare plan like the rest of us.

Many countries have universal healthcare, but the US has universally bad healthcare.

I know you're making a joke, but what you're saying is not at all true. Most people in the US have quite good healthcare. That's why it's so hard to change anything.

Say what? I cannot find a single friend or family member who wouldn't be complaining at the healthcare; and those who are healthy just complain how high deductibles are in case they got sick.

Have you ever been to Europe? Some west-block countries like Germany? Same wait time for private sector only at the 10% cost surgeries, xrays you name it, with the same equipment that USA is using in most cases.

I've had relatives that have had quadruple bypass surgery here (Canada) and had to fill out more paperwork when applying for a library card than when checking out of the hospital.

I've also had American relatives that could not, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how many times they called, begged and peaded with their insurance company, to get the treatment they desperately needed. It's like those companies would prefer to drag out the process until you're dead than pay out a nickel.

There should be a early death or inusry due to slow processing, a penalty payment..

Then the penalty cost will be weighed against the cost of covering a procedure. You can't cure lack of empathy.

He didn't say everybody. He said most people. It's impossible to give everybody awesome treatment, unless of course you want to pay for it.

It's not only possible, it's typically less expensive on a per-capita basis than what the US is doing now.

The system isn't perfect here, some people fall through the cracks or live so far away from a doctor that they can't get the care they need, but anyone that's able to see a doctor or visit a hospital will get the same treatment as anyone else who can.

I don't think you realize how much money is lost in the black hole of insurance paperwork and claims processing. People spend way too much time, doctors spend way too much time, and the hospitals spend way too much time. All of that goes away under single-payer, it simply vanishes.

The quality of care must go down for some, right? It's not possible to a) keep the same existing standard of care for all, b) maintain prices, or c) keep the same level of profit for the industry. Something has to give. If [a] and [b] are true, then profits will be lower, and therefore quality will suffer next.

I think the parent is taking about a third party, insurers who is taking money from a,b, and c.

Without debating around the edges (because yes,in practice there is almost always someone winning and someone losing), a market model only works if profit is a function of a sufficiently competitive market, and not other structural, cultural, or political factors and barriers working against that outcome. And your implied equivalency largely ignores those factors present in the US.

Indeed, the theory that a competitive market can actually deliver socially efficient outcomes could almost be said to be predicated on the idea that yes, you can push down profits substantially without quality deteriorating, because market outcomes are not driven just by profit making motives on the producers' side, but also competitive and structural considerations that determine the nature of competition and consumer demand, competition, and substitutions in that market.

So if the US healthcare system generally delivers worse outcomes and costs more (and that's something I generally take to be true), I think it would be a mistake to come at it from a simplistic point of view of an efficient market already operating and saying that any cut would worsen outcomes, because your opponents position is not predicated on the US health care system being a competitive market. Indeed, we need to take into consideration all the other structural qualities driving healthcare delivery and outcomes in the US market. And compared to most other countries, these differences are usually quite substantial: everything from your political process, to where and how health care is typically purchased and received, how your insurance market works, to your social security and labour laws.

There is nothing, in even basic neoclassical economic theory, that implies a market is optimal, in either supply quantity or quality, by maximising producer profits or surplus.

Yes, it's possible, in principle, to have all of [a], [b], and [c], by increasing productivity.

If doctors are spending a large time doing billing paperwork, that looks like a thing that could be cut.

> ... then profits will be lower.

Ah, you see, when you remove profit as the primary motivator a lot of problems go away.

Here (Canada) the insurance is public, but the hospitals are private, the doctors are self-employed. The insurance companies (plural since each province has their own singular insurer) regulate prices so costs are predictable. If a knee replacement is $X and they expect to do Y of them per year based on statistics, then it's no surprise what the final tab will be.

Hospitals and doctors are free to innovate in terms of how they provide care provided they can meet all applicable standards and regulations. If they make money, great. If they lose money that's their problem. On the whole there's no serious problem with providing the care at the regulated prices.

So yeah, it is possible to maintain the same level of care for all if you're willing to reign in profit.

But the question then would be: what If I want to pay more for even better care? Why wouldn't I be allowed to? Assuming I would be allowed to (unless there is a law against paying more), then providers should be allowed to deliver it (unless there is a law against better). At that point, some will get worse care than others, and because the line is qualitative (since politicians mostly know nothing about care), then this creates worse care for those who can't pay. It is those who we need to solve for.

Here (Canada) you have some options, but are limited. You can't pay to get to the head of the queue for some operation, you can't skip your place in line for replacement organs. Sure, if your name is literally on the hospital building because you've made a gigantic donation to it they might grease the wheels a bit in your favour, but generally you're just like everyone else.

You can go internationally for treatment but it's on your own dime. Some people, irate at wait times, will hop across the border for treatment at US hospitals. These stories show up in the paper from time to time, but the "intolerable" wait these people endure is more often than not pretty minor. Waiting six months for a hip replacement, which is not a life-threatening procedure, is not uncommon. You'll survive.

Meanwhile if you're feeling really ill and step in to the emergency wing, then they realize you're suffering from a massive cardiac problem and need to get you into the operating room immediately, you won't be stuck in line, you may not even fill out any paperwork, you'll be given all the attention they can spare until you're stabilized.

"Two-tier" health care, where you can pay to get better service than everyone else, is something politicians of the conservative bent flirt with from time to time as a way of "fixing" our health-care system. It's always shouted down because people know they're just looking for ways that their billionaire buddies can jump the queue.

It's disruptive, it creates a rift between the rich and poor and puts a lot of stress on people who may not have the money but believe they need the superior treatment.

Consider: When the Canadian medical system fails someone, when they fall through the cracks, it is front page news and the media has a field day. This happens so frequently in the US that it doesn't even surface as a story. "Old lady didn't get hip replacement, insurance wouldn't pay, stuck in old-age home forever" is not news in the US, but it would be here because people would be pissed off she didn't get fair treatment.

Everyone complains about healthcare. It's a universal thing.

In New Zealand, everyone complains about healthcare, even though hospital care is free and doctors visits are really cheap. Everyone in the UK complains about the NHS, people in Canada complain about wait times at hospitals.

> Everyone complains

Anecdotal evidence is worthless. Perhaps you could contribute something more substantive than this because it leads the conversation in an unproductive direction - "oh I live in the UK and everyone I speak to loves the NHS"

.. but they also complain about it. Expressing affection by bickering is very British.

Except that everyone complaining is the closest thing politicians get to an an RFP.

Everyone in the UK complains about the way the goverment run/fund the NHS, and the majority of the issues people have with the service are due to bad outsourcing choices or services affected by funding cuts. It's a big distinction.

Yes, people complain, but in New Zealand and much of Europe you can get your healthcare eventually. Maybe not always to world-best standards (although more often than right-wing newspapers would like to suggest), but good enough.

In the US, there are people who can't access healthcare at all - not because there's not enough providers, but simply because they don't have enough money. There's insurance plans that will cover very little unless you have a car crash, due to very high deductibles - much of America is on these.

>In the US, there are people who can't access healthcare at all - not because there's not enough providers, but simply because they don't have enough money.

That's not true. We have public hospitals, and we also have Medicaid.

Nope. I know plenty of people personally who are in the situation where they make too much money to be on Medicaid, but not enough to be on health insurance that'll actually cover anything without a deductible in the thousands. Obamacare made things better, but it's still very far from covering what universal healthcare covers for many.

Public hospitals do not treat people for free.

Public hospitals don't treat people for free officially, but the reality is most of the people don't pay and they won't refuse to treat you.

The only situation in which a hospital is required to treat you - public hospitals included - is if you go to ER and are not in a stable condition. They will not provide e.g. medicine for lifelong chronic conditions, or the tests required to make sure that medicine isn't killing you until you're practically already dead. They won't provide necessary surgery unless you're literally about to die from not having it. They won't provide psychiatric help. It is not a treatment option for anything except a car crash or severe acute illness.

On the other hand, if they'd tried to check _me_ into hospital, Id be all "Where do I sign, I'm checking myself out. I'm going to dinner and bed with my girlfriend who I haven't seen for a year!!!"

(Which is only _one_ of the reasons I didn't get to be an astronaut... ;-) )

I would have thought even if they're not treating symptoms they'd want to know things like blood pressure and blood chemistry change over time. Like, "We're going to keep drawing blood every hour until things look to be long-term stable."

Came here to say this as well. You'd think he would have a number to call, or something, and ten minutes later there's medical attention coming down like a waterfall.

The man just gave a year of his life. I expect NASA has a strong fairness and mental health reasons to reunite him with his family and loved ones as quickly as possible. Allowing him to spend his 3rd night back on earth at home seems like a small price for science to pay.

Unless of course he had a medical emergency, which this sounded pretty close to.

For sure, with the added instruction "Hey dude if your legs blow up like balloons and you come out in a weird rash call this number, k?"

That was my first reaction as well. Monitor and keep him near the experts.

Interesting start to the article, but kind of annoyed I read to the end to find its basically a teaser for Kelly's book, and the stuff about his health problems etc. is never followed up on. Wish they'd at least put that at the top of the article.

It worked on me, I'm looking forward to buying the book. Is this the first time you've come across an excerpt teaser on the internet?

It's basically just clickbait on a different scale. Clickbait doesn't stop being annoying just because it's common.

It's a long enough article for me. I feel satisfied reading it without now needing to read the book.

> But very 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.

Actually, there's a second way: call Valery Polyakov.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov

Or a whole bunch of other Mir veterans:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Avdeyev

Probably not all the relevant data would've been recorded, and as far as Kelly goes, it's not every day that you have an identical twin to serve as the control!

Still, the conditions he described at the end of the article would sure be present. I remember a Mir astronaut that couldn't sleep with anything heavier than the lighhtest blanket.

Based on the experience of cosmonauts who spent long periods of time on various Mir missions in the 1980s and 1990s, what is the long-term impact of staying in zero-gravity space for so long? If they lost bone mass, the walls of their hearts became thinner, and they received the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays daily over hundreds of days in space, are they experiencing debilitating effects 20 or 30 years later?

Given that lack of gravity seems to be a major risk factor for well-being I'm surprised a static structure like the ISS doesn't yet have a rotating centrifuge-like structure ala 2001: A Space Oddysey to at least ward off the effects during sleep and downtime

Well they do have those tied-down-with-a-spring treadmills, but that only covers you for the duration of your workout. I don’t know anything about constructing things for use in a space station, but I can’t imagine creating such a rotating structure would be easy, cheap, or safe.. a problem with a structure rotating quickly in space could quickly cause major safety issues for the ISS I’d imagine.

Resistance training is certainly still possible, but you still lose the normal ambient resistance you get on earth just from walking around and holding your limbs in place against gravity. The difference between low-gravity and someone on Earth who doesn’t exercise much is probably much larger than the difference between a non-exercising Earthling and an Earthling who exercises.

Besides, that doesn’t really work for the other physiological effects of low gravity, like the heart and circulation issues mentioned in the article.

Great point about the treadmill.

I guess my point is that I just can’t imagine that all the brilliant people involved with the ISS _didn’t_ think of a rotating structure.. but even just getting a sizable non-rotating structure cost 150B.

I wonder what kind of health issues we’d see even with a rotating structure tho. Would living on such a structure really help prevent most of these issues?

Other comments in this thread have discussed it. Sounds like NASA is well aware of rotating structures, but large ones are way too expensive and small ones cause other issues due to the fast rotation required.

There actually was a proposal for one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus-X

There's also this issue:

"Another problem is that we do know of adverse effects that arise at high rotational rates of speed. The Coriolis Effect has to do with rotating reference frames and it can seriously screw with the inner ear. The only way to maintain a strong centrifugal gravity while keeping rotational speed low is to lengthen the system as a whole — but the ISS isn’t nearly big enough."

Source: https://www.geek.com/news/geek-answers-why-doesnt-the-iss-ha...

So in effect if your feet are moving faster than your head by just enough for the inner ear to pick it up, you are likely to look at outcomes similar to motion sickness...

Zero-G also makes people sick, but astronauts can get used to it. If you put someone in a small spinning station for six months, would they also get used to the motion sickness? What if you found someone suffering from (and that had learned to live with) permanent vertigo?

Shouldn't motion sickness only happen when you have a reference frame? i.e., if you're on the space station you shouldn't be able to tell when it's spinning?

A rotating object isn't exactly the same as gravity. There's a rotational effect that exists, so you can tell the difference between being on the ground and in a centrifuge.

If the station is large enough. In smaller centrifuges, there'sre noticable Coriolis effects.

Only for non-inertial reference frames. If the station were rotating, it would therefore be accelerating, and you would be able to feel it.

One way to make it "big enough" is to put a weight on the end of a long cable, and spin the combination. It wouldn't need to be a full g either, some should be a lot better than nothing.

With a cable, though, there might be weird problems with oscillations.

Or, alternatively, a zero-g banjo and opportunity for true space music.

Yea, I think tethers in space are still considered quite tricky.

One alternative is to replace the cable with a rigid tube, and then have living quarters at both ends. The tube is big enough for an astronaut to pass through. Sort of a one spoke section of a spoked wheel.

Real Engineering had an episode on simulated gravity through rotation. It's a great channel, though I was a little disappointed this episode talked more about fictional examples than proposals like Nautilus-X. Great watch either way though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im-JM0f_J7s

One was planned, but it was cancelled due to budget overruns: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Mo...

Humans would not have fit.

The goal was to "Expose a variety of biological specimens that are less than 24.5 in (0.62 m) tall"

As others have stated, if you don't take a very large diameter, the Coriolis effect starts to be really disorienting. That can be counteracted somewhat by reducing the speed of rotation, but that comes at the cost of lower effective gravity.

The ISS is simply too small for that. It would have to spin at a ridiculous rate in order to get to a level of gravity where the effects are no longer felt. And in this particular case that is actually a blessing because even if the space station would be able to do this the spaceship used for any interplanetary traveling would not and so no useful data for such a trip would be collected.

Since the centrifugal force for mass m, angular velocity w and radius r is mw²r, you only need w = sqrt(g/r) to reproduce Earth-like levels of acceleration. At r = 10 m, that's already less than 1 rad/s or 1/6 cycle/s. That doesn't seem ridiculously fast.

And why wouldn't an interplanetary spaceship be able to spin fast enough? You could just build it as a space station with thrusters.

The O'Neil space station designs were premised on 1 RPM. Though a 3 RPM environment might be tolerable continuously, switching between rotating and non-rotating environments suggested a lower rate. See:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/colonies_chap0...

To make it Earth-like, and not make people nauseous, it has to have a diameter around 200 meters. Less than one G is practical, though. As little as 0.25 G might forestall the medical complications.

Sounds like you've just described the "Graviton", a popular amusement park ride.

While a 30 second ride may be fun, I couldn't imagine living on it for months at a time. (granted, it simulates > 1G)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitron

I think the problem is the difference of g between r and r-1.75 (the height of a human standing up).

Coriolis forces will make this non-feasible. You'd need to do much better than that.

Lack of gravity also means there will never be a permanent presence in space. Making a big station and spinning it is the only way anyone is going to survive in space for more than a few years.

I guess if the costs of sending something into space comes down this will become an option, then they just have to solve radiation shielding and everyone will be happy.

Of course no tests have been actually done so both are assumptions..

I love that movie. The bone-space montage is so good.

The ISS is, primarily, our single microgravity laboratory. Giving it gravity would make it unfit for that role.

(NASA could duplicate the radiation and confinement here on Earth relatively easily, if not for the ethical issues. These seem to not matter as much when compensated with the privilege of going to space. But making gravity on space just to hack an ethically acceptable experiment would start to get ridiculous.)

> The ISS is, primarily, our single microgravity laboratory. Giving it gravity would make it unfit for that role.

Centripetal force is not truly gravity. This is useful because a station simulating gravity by spinning can still have areas that are isolated from this force (the center).

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I did read in Chris Hadfields book that it takes basically the same amount of time you are in space to recover afterwards on the ground. If you're up for 6 months, you'll need about 6 months recovery.

But he's totally ok now, right?

It's entirely possible he's about as "totally OK" as a smoker who smoked for a decade and has now quit for a decade. I don't think we have _anything_ like enough long term data to even know what problems might start appearing in 20, 30, 40 years...

Irreversible bone mass reduction; heart shrinkage up to the point astronauts couldn't walk upon returning to Earth.

The current record holder doesn't seem to be doing too bad. Although he doesn't seem to be very public in the last few years, but he's still around at 75, I'd like to live to this age.

> completed his second flight into space in 1994–1995, spending 437 days in space

> Polyakov did not suffer from any prolonged performance impairments after returning to Earth

There probably is some selection bias there. Astro/cosmo/taikonauts are, on average, quite a bit more healthy than the general population.

Well apparently long term spaceflight has permanent negative effects on your vision: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experime...

This is why people like Scott Kelly should be considered heroes. They are pushing our knowledge about manned spaceflight, and doing to at considerable personal risk and effort. But as a result, we are getting more knowledgeable about the problems, and hopefully solution approaches. That stays on the ISS of 6 months or even a year are somewhat a routine is quite an achievement. And we might find out, how to do even longer stays in zero gravity. With these results we then can set mission limits for a potential Mars mission. Of course one obvious solution would be to fly faster. Musk hinted at his BFR presentations of a 3 month flight time which would be less than the routine stays on the ISS.

I still wonder if Musk considered effect of months in space on the average person.

Musk knows that it is not the ideal environment for human health. But Musk also knows that the rate-limiting step is not human health in space, but the cost of getting to space. We can not move forward in making a healthy environment for humans in space if we're not putting hundreds of ambitious, fearless humans in space at low cost per human.

Astronauts always seem to be these clean-cut godfearing family-men types.

Maybe antisocial misanthropic weirdos would be better suited.

From a psychological perspective. They wouldnt miss family/friends, and might enjoy living on spacefood.

The military generally wants soldiers to have families because it gives them more of a will to survive. I imagine NASA wants similar things for their astronauts.

All the Air Force and Navy pilot ones are. The officer corps in both is extremely conservative and traditional. To the point that if you're not married you have difficult time rising to the mid/upper ranks.

Peter Watts has an interesting take on this in his book Starfish.

I am a somewhat antisocial misanthropic weirdo: moody, inconsistent, sometimes very good, sometimes very bad.

My brother is a brick: solid family man, consistent as hell, mountain climber, athlete, scared of absolutely nothing irrational.

I'd send him into space a 1000 times before I'd send me.

A lot of this seems gravity-related. The answer is relatively simple: if we are going to Mars, use a rotating spaceship (or one with an internal centrifugr).

The SLS Block 1B can carry rigid cargo that's up to 10m wide and the BFR seems to be able to carry up to 9. That's enough for an internal centrifuge astronauts could spend lots of time in, only moving to the zero-g areas out of it when needed. If we think about inflatable modules, the space becomes even larger.

I wonder if a centrifuge could be added to the ISS or if the vibration would be too much of a problem.

It should be noted that, in Mars' reduced gravity, it can be presumed the symptoms would be lessened. Still a major concern, however.

I don't think the concern is about gravitational conditions once you're on Mars, but the long trip to and from Mars (18 months each way, best case with current technology).

Edit: I was wrongly thinking 18mo each way when it's closer to 18mo-ish round trip. Sorry internet armchair soldiers.

It is most emphatically not 18 months each way. 8.5 months or so on a Hohmann transfer, the longest low-energy direct transfer.

Yes, you are right. I goofed up.

Where are you reading this? It is seven months each way as per the following: https://www.mars-one.com/faq/mission-to-mars/how-long-does-i...

Yes, you are right. I goofed up.

> Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC.

You sure it's not 18 months total?

Yes, you are right. I goofed up.

It's still a daunting prospect for those expecting to return from mars to earth.

I had been somewhat under the impression that current colonization plans were one-way deals. Agreed that it'll be an issue once we have the infrastructure and desire to return to Earth.

Prior to colonization, I'd expect there to be visits which do not result in permanent residency on Mars.

It's an interesting question whether the first person to set foot on mars will expect to return to earth.

I expect it would be easy to find people willing to make a one-way trip. However, I have two reservations. The first is the acceptance of society of sending someone to their death. The second is whether it is responsible to use essentially suicidal people for such a mission. These missions take a lot of mental resilience, and generally, we consider being suicidal to be a mental illness.

I highly doubt people born and raised on Mars (if it is even possible to live long-term there) could ever live on Earth -- simply with respect to gravity and developmental consequences.

...And this is why Mars for colonists is still very much a turgid fantasy. We need to dream less, and commit more to the hard and expensive org of solving these problems. Step 1: stop stripping NASA down to bare metal.

Here’s some possible insight into the impact of radiation on their brains: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/space-radiation-may-d... this is in addition to bones, muscles, eyes, etc.

Edit: the prevalence of downvotes and the lack of a coherent argument is painfully telling. Remember that you have to get to Mars as well.

Edit re product50: Can’t do this one very specific thing, for good reasons, and only for now. Hint! If your magic trick requires that all of the skeptics leave the room, it’s not magic, it’s a con.

There's a strong sentiment that anything anti-mars-enthusiasm hurts humanity more than helps. There's absolutely nothing to support this idea, other than some misplaced notion of hope in the face of nihilism of our terrestrial problems. In proper pragmatic context, if we can't colonize the moon, sending people to Mars is a massive waste and overly dangerous. Nobody wants to admit to that, because movie fantasy has somehow reinforced this mystical goal in some form of misplaced nationalist sentiment about America-fuck-yeah (as far as I can tell).

Yeah - so instead let us not do anything and spend our time commenting on random threads how bad the idea is. You realize that at every cusp of a major technological breakthrough, there were 100s of people like you saying how terrible the idea was?

You are getting downvoted for your pessimistic and can't do attitude than anything else.

Well of course we don't track very well all the major ambitions that failed because of undue optimism.

Stripping NASA down to bare metal? The same NASA that’s spending over $2B a launch to build the SLS, when they could buy the same capacity from private launch companies at less than 1/10th the cost?

And radiation is not a significant threat, we will have hundreds if not thousands of qualified astronauts fighting over being one of the first to take the relatively minor radiation risks to be the first to go.

The same NASA who subsidized private contractors, so they could reach this price with equipment, science and funds?

NASA didn’t subsidize SpaceX, like commercial customers it signed contracts for specific services, and specifically because SpaceX was cheap. ULA got $1B a year for “readiness” and its launches cost at least double the cost of SpaceX.

If you want to give credit to NASA for cheap private launch systems, then why isn’t it using them, and has it blown $20B in pork trying to replace them?

we will have hundreds if not thousands of qualified astronauts fighting over being one of the first to take the relatively minor radiation risks to be the first to go

Same with the age of sail, which claimed many lives, often for the dubious benefit of a few wealthy assholes who never touched a ship.

Are you volunteering to be first to Mars?

Nope, i’m not qualified. Anyone who dies will do it with their eyes open.

Let’s put it this way. If we can land explorers on Mars for $100B at a 5% risk of death, or spent $1 trillion to reduce that risk to 1%, should we wait decades to find funding for the safer plan?

Well, if we know positively than human body can't stand such travel, then the only answer to colonize mars is sending humans that doesn't have a body. This could solve the problem.

Or just a more ambitious plan, including funding for advanced radiation shielding, a rotating section for gravity etc. we can do it, but it’s going to take a lot of work, money, and time. All people seem to want is a magical billionaire.

Or building a robotic uterus and robotic teachparents, sending a box full of frozen sperm and frozen ovules to mars at full 'delivering pizza velocity' and re-assembling humans directly when reaching destiny

Some interesting moral questions would arise, like how can you volunteer and agree to go to mars if nobody asked you before to send you to the space?

Moral quandaries aside, I like how you think.

We need to dream big while we commit to solving the problems spaceflight poses to human health.

Whether or not NASA has the right amount of funding is not going to make or break this; instead, we need to lower the cost of spaceflight and start sending more stuff and more people up there. With the cost of going to space lowered one hundred times, suddenly NASA's current budget becomes quite sufficient.

This article is one man's emotional retelling of his first days on Earth after a year in LEO (he's trying to sell his book). In contrast, a trip to Mars is only three months, and it will be on a ship with a water layer (radiation shielding) between the outer hull and the cabin - a much better environment for humans. Thus this article is not the determining factor for whether or not Mars is a pipe dream.

The other big danger of spaceflight is the body's response to microgravity, which can be solved with a massive centrifuge. Hard, but possible.

Telling humans to not dream and have hope for colonizing Mars is an egregious offence. The window of technology is open, but it will not be open forever. We will lose our technology in the future, either soon or in many millenia. In addition, there is rising tension in our low-growth society. A few more natural disasters or bad geo-political alliances and tensions might explode, hastening the closing of our technology window. Should that window close, and we fail to reach Mars, then humans will be a grand failure: We had all the resources to colonize another planet and begin colonizing the Universe, but instead we killed ourselves as we gave in to our aggressive tendencies.

Thus we _must_ be more ambitious. We _must_ dream big and strive every day to do the impossible, for the cost of not striving may be another 14-billion-year waiting period to get the opportunity to do this again, on another planet, at another time, waiting for another species to awaken with consciousness and begin it's own effort to overcome the Great Filter[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

I’m into science, not quasi religious hope in the face of the terror of our own extinction. If we leave Earth, we’ll be solving nothing, we are the problem. At best we’d be delaying something, not solving the underlying issues of what led us to flee Earth. If you think of Mars as a backup for Earth then think again, it needs to be independent of Earth, and that’s a dream for now.

Less hope, more rational thought might save us; hope lets you ignore reality and live for a dream.

Just live.

In your first argument, you argued that we could not colonize Mars. Now you concede that we can colonize Mars, while arguing humans have a fundamental flaw. What is your point, and why do you hold it?

I conceded what now? What I did is something called “arguing in the alternative,” and that only by the narrowest of margins.

The first three paragraphs sound like he is a PTSD victim from a forgotten war. The next seven, like a nerve gas victim. With all this in mind.

This si more than a red flag for space travel, more has to be done before we even consider establishing a base anywhere off-world. Till then, probes and asteroid mining seem more profitable, safe and mind expanding.

People don't want to accept the truth about humans in space.

People don't care if their frontier is safe. The human drive to explore and stake out new lands has always been much stronger than their need for safety.

I so agree. It would be more worthwhile to terraform the Australian outback or Gobi desert and put a forest and settlers there than oxygenated domes on Mars. Not to say that space exploration should never be an agenda, but rather we select projects that have a national or scientific ROI with little to no harm caused to any individual.

The space station is just in low earth orbit. Radiation is a lot worse in real space.

Use it or lose it applies to the human body.

And they're stumped? Wow.

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