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posted by martyb on Thursday May 31 2018, @09:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-out-of-this-world! dept.

Sex on Mars is going to be risky, but it could create a new human subspecies

In a new research paper published in Futures, an international team of scientists examines the challenges of reproduction on the Martian surface. It's a risky proposition, but if humans succeed in conceiving, carrying, and birthing offspring on another world it might actually be the start of a new species.

In the paper, the researchers tackle a huge number of potential problems that could crop up when humans are finally ready to rear young on Mars. The first and most obvious hurdle is the low gravity environment, which could pose a serious threat to the conception and pregnancy processes that seem so simple here on Earth.

[...] The paper also examines the inherent challenges of bolstering the numbers of a small colony of settlers on the planet. The concept of "love" might have to take a back seat to pure survival, with men and women being paired up by their biology rather than emotion. Additionally, some individuals may never be allowed to have children due to undesirable traits that are a risk to the colony as a whole.

In a somewhat scary aside, the researchers also note that editing the genes of future Mars babies might be an easy way to increase the prospects of survival.

Also at Live Science.

Biological and social challenges of human reproduction in a long-term Mars base (DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2018.04.006) (DX)

Related: Space colonization and suffering risks: Reassessing the "maxipok rule" (DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2018.04.008) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 01 2018, @02:04PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday June 01 2018, @02:04PM (#687241)

    0) I don't deny that the experiment would be informative, just not conclusive. How exactly would you conclusively separate the problems caused by radiation from those caused by gravity, while ruling out new problems caused by high-speed rotation? You'd have to have an huge population size, which means mice or something, which in turn means any results aren't necessarily applicable to humans. We'll absolutely have to address the issue eventually as we move into space, but tackling one of the most challenging environments first is perhaps not well-advised.

    1) Mars also has literal gigatons tons of near-free radiation shielding (a.k.a. water, sand, and rock).

    2) Water is good, but isn't exactly light either, and introduces containment issues since it can't hold together on its own (keeping it frozen this close to the sun would be a major challenge in itself). And the real problem isn't nuclear radiation, but cosmic rays and the high-energy particle cascades they create - it's like sitting in the beam of a broad-spectrum particle accelerator whose higher energies completely dwarf anything we've created. It's a whole different problem than anything we see on Earth, where we have 14psi of atmospheric shielding protecting us. You pretty much just need a lot of mass between you and the source - not just to block the cosmic rays themselves, but the relativistic particle cascades they create. And experiments have shown that the kind of mass is only somewhat relevant: dense solids are a bit more effective per pound than gasses, but larger nuclei like lead create radioactive particle cascades that are considerably more dangerous than the cosmic rays that create them.

    We may not need a full 14psi (984g/cm^2, or ~10m of water), but I'm guessing that less than a tenth of that won't be sufficient. Though hey, I'd love to be proved wrong. If an ice-dome a meter thick is enough to safely live under long-term, then that would make Mars colonies far less claustrophobic than having to spend most of your time underground. With proper conditions during freezing, a meter of ice can be extremely transparent. Even at worst you'd get a lovely glowing frosted dome above you, with a bit of an earthy blue sky tint.

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