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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:17AM
from the build-a-space-elevator-on-the-moon dept.
from the build-a-space-elevator-on-the-moon dept.
NASA seems hell bent to go to Mars, but can't afford to on its own.
Its international partners have no stomach for that — they would would rather return to our moon and build a base there for further exploration.
Doesn't going back to the moon make more sense? Build a base on the moon, and use its low gravity and possible water at the poles as propellant for further space exploration?
Why not the moon first?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/7/11868840/moon-return-journey-to-mars-nasa-congress-space-policy
Links:
From NASA itself, in 2008: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/series/moon/why_go_back.html
The all-knowing, ever-trustworthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon
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Should We Skip Mars for Now and Go to the Moon Again?
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Well begun is half done.
-- Aristotle
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Wednesday June 08 2016, @10:02AM
0) Find or develop better radiation shielding.
1) do artificial gravity tests on radiation shielded mice - 0.16G (Moon G), 0.38G (Mars G,), 0.5G, 0.75G, 1.0G in space, 1.0G in space with high shielding, 1.0G on ground (control - same stuff but Earth radiation levels).
Then see what happens to them after year or so.
Then based on the results do more experiments on mice, fish, or chickens (many humans eat chickens or fish). Or if there's enough info, proceed to similar experiments on humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module
It's stupid and unscientific to even think about putting humans long term on the Moon or Mars when we don't even have any data points on the long term effects of Moon or Mars gravity on humans or other animals. We just have data points for microgravity and Earth g.
It's like throwing resources into a tech tree when we haven't even developed or built the prerequisites.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @10:29AM
NASA's numbers predict negligible risk of cancer as a result of Mars mission. I think it was about 3%, and I can dig up the source if you want me to. It was more of a risk than they find acceptable, but nothing much.
By the time we get near a 2035 mission, we will probably have figured out how to get to Mars in close to a month rather than 3-6 months, such as by using a fusion rocket. Cutting the duration of the mission cuts the radiation risks and the weightlessness risks. Maybe the shielding will be better during that timeframe as well.
MarsOne has shown that a large number of people are willing to at least entertain the possibility of one-way space martyrdom. Being able to travel to Mars and return to Earth alive is a luxury that seems to be the plan for the even the first missions to Mars. The actual professional astronauts know that they could die at any time during the mission, especially during the minutes spent escaping Earth's atmosphere.
The astronauts come home and are monitored closely for health issues, probably catching any potential cancer very early on. They will benefit from the better treatments of the 2020s-2040s. In 2016 there is renewed hope of a universal cancer treatment (the one that used a virus).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Wednesday June 08 2016, @11:44AM
In contrast what I propose is actual science. It would be filling in important blanks in our knowledge. That data would be useful for knowing what might happen to humans if we stayed on the Moon or Mars for long term vs 1G in a space station. If NASA isn't interested in such stuff then it should stop wasting money on manned missions and stick to sending bots.
With our current tech we won't be able to change the gravity/long-term acceleration on Mars that easily but we can adjust it in a suitably designed/equipped space station. So if it turns out that humans can't stay long term on Mars due to insufficient gravity, then it would be better to focus our time and resources on building better space-stations with artificial gravity, instead of wasting any time and resources on building bases on Mars. We can reconsider Mars once we've developed the tech to deal with the gravity problem there.
If NASA's real mission is still about ego-trips and entertaining the masses perhaps they should do a reality TV show called "Vote Them Off The Planet".
* Our finite planet has vast resources but they are not infinite. We are hitting Earth Overshoot Day earlier and earlier each year. Perhaps we still have enough time and resources to waste on such stuff. Whatever it is I doubt I'd live long enough for it to be a big problem for me. To me it's like pointing out an error in someone else's homework.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 08 2016, @02:08PM
It really doesn't matter a whole lot what the science says will happen to people in space. We're going to go anyway. Look at the earth - men in coal mines, men in copper mines, people in diamond mines, people below the surface of the ocean, more people in Antarctica. People go where they can make a buck, and damn the consequences. If Elon Musk (or anyone else) can provide the transportation, there will be people standing in line to get in on the action. Soon thereafter, corporations will be standing in line to send people to perform whatever tasks seem appropriate.
I'm still waiting for Mary Kay to "discover" that moon dust makes all of their cosmetics more effective. You'll see thousands of rocket drivers making the run to the moon to bring back a load of dust. Rocket driver will become just another profession, like truck driver.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @04:48PM
Rocket driver will become just another profession for AIs, like truck driver.
FTFY
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 08 2016, @05:42PM
Pretty much agree with this, other than the dismissive treatment of a return to the moon.
The moon is a perfect test-bed for growing things, and low gravity survival, artificial gravity testing, etc, etc, etc.
In addition it is close enough to serve as an industrial base, from which launching stuff is way cheaper.
We could build structures above and below the surface by sintering local materials.
The single biggest issue will be landing a power plant (or two) large enough to provide for heat, power, water extraction, sintering, smelting, welding and 3D printing.
With spare parts only a month away (maybe mere minutes away with 3D printing) the moon is doable, unlike mars where the first minor breakage probably means a mad scramble that can't succeed for three to six months in the best possible scenario.
Best of all, it will teach us how to get along without an atmosphere, because dreams of building an atmosphere on mars just aren't going to come true.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @10:37PM
This is so comically optimistic. We are going to be on Earth forever until it melts or ices over. There is no possible scenario where humans will live anywhere else even in our solar system. Space is utterly inhospitable and we are absolutely suited to this niche. We might send robots or lichen or bacteria but we are HOME.
A power plant on the moon? How about putting a power plant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? That would be easier, and just as useful. I.e. absolutely useless.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:28AM
Not really. The Moon is a perfect staging base to launch out into the rest of the Solar System. Every resource we are going to run out of here is out there, except dead dino. We are going to go get that abundance eventually. The first people will be strictly out there for the money, intending to get rich and then come home, like a lot of people do today working in nasty places. Eventually though there will be enough people out there that a few places will become hospitable enough that people will decide to call it home. And it is actually easier to deal with the cold empty nothing of space than the bottom of the ocean.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @03:31AM
There is no possible scenario where humans will live anywhere else even in our solar system.
Science fiction throws those out all the time. Your scenario of the impossibility of permanent human habitation of space is just as much a fiction. Given that humanity has a habit of doing impossible things (which turn out to not actually be impossible), I really don't see the point of your argument.
Space is utterly inhospitable and we are absolutely suited to this niche.
We already live in space. The engineering problem here is not to figure out how to survive in space, but figure out how to build enough of the environment of Earth to turn the "utterly inhospitable" into hospitable.
A power plant on the moon? How about putting a power plant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? That would be easier, and just as useful. I.e. absolutely useless.
Unless, of course, you need it to power something on the Moon or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, then it becomes useful. It's worth noting that we've already powered things on the Moon and at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. They were useful when we did that too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @04:02AM
How about putting a power plant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench? That would be easier, and just as useful. I.e. absolutely useless.
As an aside, the area of the Mariana Trench is about 15 square kilometers. It's a small nook on Earth. The Moon has an area of almost 15 million square km. I find it interesting how the people talking about the impossibility of space colonization pick the most provincial examples on Earth.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @10:33AM
Well, we've had people staying in a microgravity environment for more than 1 year (Mir), and unless there's any indication (i.e. credible hypotheses) towards the opposite there's no reason to believe (and therefore a waste of precious resources to test) that more gravity than experienced by those cosmonauts but less than what we have on earth would have any greater adverse effect on the people traveling to and temporarily living on the moon/mars. Radiation is of course another matter, but it's a problem with a hardware solution that can be developed and tested on earth without any live test subjects. In any case, probably no one is proposing to keep anyone up there for several years, at this point, except maybe ... mmh chickens, .... sorry you were saying?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 08 2016, @08:01PM
0) Particle radiation comes in two flavors: charged (can be deflected by magnetic fields, so the ISS is mostly safe within the Earth's magnetosphere) and uncharged (blocked by direct nucleus impacts, shielding scales roughly linearly with the amount of mass, with only a slight variations due to density). Charged could hypothetically be reduced with magnetic shielding, uncharged probably not. Meaning you need ~14lb/in^2 of shielding to approach the shielding levels at the Earth's surface. That's going to be ridiculously expensive in space for the foreseeable future so, if you want shielding, you need to go to another moon/planet/asteroid. At which point you have plenty of radiation shielding available and don't really need magnetic shielding anymore.
Basically, the only place we're likely to see improvement in shielding is for traveling between large masses, and we can already do that with cancer risks lower than associated with many occupations and environments on Earth.
1) You do understand that all such "artificial gravity" experiments can only be done in space, right? And would consume a sizable percentage of the current research infrastructure. Unless someone quietly developed gravity shields, we can only really fake *increases* in gravity (typically using centripetal force, which also introduces additional variables in the form of torques and tidal effects). Also, like any medical research, such experiments would only be directly relevant to the species studied. If you want to know how low gravity will effect humans, you have to send humans. And fortunately there doesn't appear to be any shortage of volunteers, so the only genuine problem is how to manage the PR for the inevitable unpleasantness that will afflict the first wave. And you'd have to do that regardless, because there's inevitably going to be things you didn't think to test, and accidents will happen as well.
Meanwhile, the problems known to exist with microgravity do not seem to be, in and of themselves, fatal, and can mostly be mitigated with an appropriate exercise regime. Low gravity would presumably further mitigate the problems. So unless you can suggest a reason why low gravity might be worse than none, the presumption is that humans should be able to survive a prolonged period in low-gravity situations. Their life expectancy may be lower, their eyesight may degrade faster, and they might not be able to survive returning to Earth, but so long as the volunteers are willing to accept that price, it's largely a non-issue. Plenty of people work jobs right here on Earth with far greater risks.
The most problematic issue will likely be reproduction - but we've managed to breed many plants along with frogs, salamanders, and fish in microgravity, sea urchins apparently didn't do so well. Mammalian reproduction looks somewhat more problematic, with mouse embryonic cell division occurring much more slowly, on average, in simulated microgravity, but that might also be due to the deeply unnatural motion associated with the simulation, we'll have to test that in space to know more. Of those embryos eventually implanted in females, they developed to healthy births though at lower numbers than in normal litters.
So yeah, definitely still more research to be done on that front. Presuming humans behave similarly we might only have to deal with effectively reduced fertility due to higher early-term spontaneous abortion (already possibly as high as 25-75%, though I can't find any solid numbers), or problems could continue after implantation in sustained micro-g leading to high rates of birth defects without aggressive preventative measures. And whether such problems will also manifest in low-G environments, and to what extent, remains to be seen. However, gamete health seems unaffected by microgravity, so even in the absolute worst case, space habitats would simply require simulated gravity "maternity wards" if they wanted natural population growth. The more pressing question would be how much damage the simulated gravity would do to mothers acclimated to low-G.
Basically, to do the experiments you want to do, that haven't already been done, in a radiation-shielded environment, we need to have laboratories on the Moon or Mars. Or an asteroid, but that adds a bunch of additional challenges. So then the question becomes, what are the relative costs and benefits of manning those labs with people rather than remotely operated semi-autonomous robots. Robots would undoubtedly be cheaper per 'bot in terms of dollars and lives, but probably far more expensive in terms of the timescale at which research is accomplished. As the sentiment is sometimes expressed, almost everything Opportunity accomplished in it's decade-plus on Mars, could have been accomplished in a few days by a grad-student with a similar lab.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @03:00AM
1) You do understand that all such "artificial gravity" experiments can only be done in space, right? And would consume a sizable percentage of the current research infrastructure. Unless someone quietly developed gravity shields, we can only really fake *increases* in gravity (typically using centripetal force, which also introduces additional variables in the form of torques and tidal effects). Also, like any medical research, such experiments would only be directly relevant to the species studied. If you want to know how low gravity will effect humans, you have to send humans. And fortunately there doesn't appear to be any shortage of volunteers, so the only genuine problem is how to manage the PR for the inevitable unpleasantness that will afflict the first wave. And you'd have to do that regardless, because there's inevitably going to be things you didn't think to test, and accidents will happen as well.
Artificial gravity is not that hard to test. You could do that with a few hundred million dollars in satellite. And medical testing has shown that testing other species like mice are relevant to humans.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 09 2016, @03:09PM
Actually something like 90% of medical discoveries in mice don't end up translating to humans. We don;'t use them because they're accurate, but because they're cheap, live fast, (so that many long-term effects manifest quickly) and research strains are inbred to the point that they're only a stones-through from all being clones, drastically reducing genetic variables when testing. They give us rough guidance into further research, not much more than that.
For your satellite, fair point. I could see a little automated mouse cage with cameras, etc. coming in at that price range, and then gently de-orbit for dissection after a couple years. Couldn't be very big though, after all you need a lot of shielding if you want atmosphere-grade radiation shielding - covering a 1-foot diameter sphere with 14lb/in^2 of shielding comes to 6300lb, (assuming zero-thickness shielding. Geometric realities will push that number considerably higher, though high-density shielding will push it down again, might roughly cancel out). A pair of those, tethered together, and you could spin them up to whatever "gravity" you wanted. You might want to ask a biologist how much human intervention is required to keep caged mice healthy though - full automation for a multi-year experiment could prove challenging. It'd be a real shame if they got stressed and ate each other before you could dissect them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @04:03PM
Actually something like 90% of medical discoveries in mice don't end up translating to humans.
I imagine a fair number of those discoveries are due to spurious p-testing and don't end up translating to mice either. And 10% is a pretty good rate.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 09 2016, @05:37PM
Heh, don't get me started.
Still, if the results were due to spurious p-testing then I'd expect to see similar spurious positives in human trials by the same statistically incompetent researchers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @10:31PM
Still, if the results were due to spurious p-testing then I'd expect to see similar spurious positives in human trials by the same statistically incompetent researchers.
And your point is? The end result is still that the mouse model has relevance to the human model which really is all anyone is saying here. That is still a lot better than the low gravity research to date.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 11 2016, @09:04AM
Still, if the results were due to spurious p-testing then I'd expect to see similar spurious positives in human trials by the same statistically incompetent researchers.
I thought that was what we had.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @08:34AM
Before before that, NASA should do some sort of generic cost-benefit-risk assessment and decide, based on the results, where to invest research $$. If it turns out that there are cheap to attack, high risk items, then probably attacking these first would be sensible...