NASA scientists are intensifying their investigation into a vision disorder that affects 70% of astronauts on long-duration space missions, as new research reveals the condition poses mounting risks for future Mars exploration 1 2. Space- Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS) causes crew members to experience blurred reading vision, swollen optic discs, and flattened eyeballs that can persist for years after returning to Earth
I hear what you’re saying. To be fair though, it’s never too soon to start thinking about the future. And from my perspective, the future in space looks very bright indeed.
Never said it’s not, just saying we have to ensure we live here first because we don’t even know if interplanetary habitation is viable. We assume so, but in cases like this, we learn that there are variables uncounted that must be.
I think the problem I have is with the word “first”. If we do that, we’ll all be miserable for the next several millennia, and then we all die. If we try to make earth work “first”, it will never actually be time to focus on space.
We can do them both at the same time, and that time is now.
Also, what about interplanetary habitation wouldn’t be possible? You just create an earth-like environment in space. Yes, that’s a monumental task, but it’s also a fairly straightforward task. If you can build a park or seed a forest on earth, you can do the same on a large spinning habitat in space.
In some ways doing it at a smaller scale is really more complicated. When you can simply recreate a whole biome, that certainly makes things simple. But when you need to pack everything necessary for sustainable living into a small station, that’s quite complicated and results in a delicate ecosystem with a lot of failure conditions which could end in total ecological collapse. But again, to master those techniques, we need to start doing it.
The earth is immeasurably more inhabitable and solvable than any achieveable planetary body we know of. If you can’t solve the problems here first. You more than likely cannot solve the problems at all.
What if the core problem is elbow room. What if what we really need is room to expand, “space” if you will.
And why does it have to be about solving problems? Why can’t it be expanding into space for the opportunity it represents. Space habitats aren’t for escaping earth, that’s not the point. It’s more like expanding earth, until earth is more of an idea than a single place.
Because, as this article points out, space is not currently habitable. Additionally, I think you’re missing my point. If we can’t solve a social problem like that here, I don’t see how we’ll solve it by making it much harder with things like medical complications from flat eyes. That’s before we get into the bevy of other problems in medical, manufacturing, and energy that are inherent to space. Space is not like our earth, practically divinely engineered for us by sheer luck. To quote many a NASA staff member “Space is hard”. But I’m not saying that means don’t do it, I’m saying it means have your priorities straight because we all need to save this insanely perfect planet first. It’s going to be way easier to do that than to “move on and start fresh”. You’re not in the old pioneering days where you could just take a ship to another land and start anew. This beyond wasn’t mean for us as we are, but as we will be.
I disagree completely. There are many problems associated with living in low gravity or freefall, but I don’t advocate living like that. Rotating habitats are not that hard.
Medical problems there may still be, it’s true. But I would argue that for every challenge we face in manufacturing, we’ll see just as many advantages. And energy is a completely different story, energy is just easier in space than on earth. Certainly for space around Erath, Mars, or anything closer to the sun, solar is the obvious choice. It’s cheap, steady and runs 24/7 with no weather or nights.
I would argue that having our priorities straight would mean providing NASA with 20x their current annual budget. We could easily account for that cost but adjusting our spending on tax breaks for the wealthy and new military programs. As it is, we’re mostly ignoring space rather than investing in it.
Don’t get me wrong, earth is great, biologically it’s perfect for us. But societally, it’s limiting, and we’ll never achieve more if we don’t actually reach for it.
“I disagree completely” with a statement that’s never been disproven in the entire existence of our species?.. This is literally an article about long term astronauts suffering a serious medical complication, and that’s not even a lifetime up there. You think we could have a baby and raise it in orbit? You understand the radiation shielding isn’t perfect? You understand there are unexplained medical complications in bone density, muscle density, and heart function for returning astronauts? You understand that new bacterial and microbial colonies have manifested in the iss and we don’t know anything about the long-term effects that will have?
“Energy is easier in space”
Alright, here you’re just brazenly wrong. Energy is so so much more difficult in space due to the vacuum. Managing thermal effects is exponentially more difficult, and it’s not as easy as just “slap some solar panels up” are you even familiar with the failure rate of solar panels due to space debris? Even the smallest of micro debris can pick up significant momentum with no atmospheric drag and slight gravitational acceleration.
The budget is one thing we agree on. We spend vastly more than that on yachts so it’s not even an issue. I don’t believe you have any idea how difficult space really is though, and I encourage you to study it further because it’s not the escape you hope it will be. Not in our lifetimes. Not without a miracle.
Yes I disagree… Your argument was:
Which is a weird stance, as humans have been living in space continually for the last 25 years… (With zero gaps btw). But the word “uninhabitable” implies more, it suggests that it can’t be done. But I think it’s clear that this is a limitation of funding and priorities. If we wanted to build larger habitats in space, we could, we have the know-how.
And again… While this appears to be an article about serious complications to living in space, it’s almost certainly about serious complications to living in zero G. If that sounds like a minor distinction, know that it really isn’t. Because all that stuff you mentioned, heart issues, bone density, etc, those are all 0G issues. And do I think it’s safe to have a baby in orbit, in 1G? Yeah, I think it is.
Radiation and shielding really aren’t a huge problem or a huge challenge either, there are clear ways to mitigate the issue. Specifically, you can use your water supply as shielding. Also, the problem scales well with size, as your habitat gets larger, shielding requirements become a lower and lower percentage of the habitat’s mass.
Oh so you must know that the original solar arrays installed on the ISS 25 years ago are still running then? We’ve added additional arrays over the years and recently put in much more efficient rollout arrays to account for increased power usage. Yeah, occasionally debris will knock out individual cells, but that doesn’t lead to the whole array going down. So yes solar arrays degrade over time, especially in low earth orbit, but it’s not like the original ones have been blasted to bits, they still work 25 years later.
And yeah you need radiators for heat management. This is not an enormous cost or engineering challenge.
Too sum up, there are a few extra considerations for developing radiation resistant panels and providing adequate cooling, but when you figure that out (and we have) it really is as simple as “slapping some solar panels up”.