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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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(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.