Posted on 01/15/2007 7:39:49 PM PST by KevinDavis
NASA is studying better ways for astronauts to exercise in space after long-running medical tests on International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers revealed significant bone loss rates.
Tests indicate bone loss rates of up to 1.5% a month, "or about as much as a post-menopausal woman loses per year", says Julie Robinson, acting ISS programme scientist at NASA Johnson Space Center. The results mean that, unless bone loss rates can be countered, a prolonged Mars mission would be virtually untenable for humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
Two words . . . bigger bones.
Are you kidding me? Mr. T figured this out back in the 1980s. To paraphrase him: "Milk, fool!"
they should just recruit from the Republican Congress.
They're pretty limp-boned to start with.
Two words: Rubber Bands.
I have been aware of this problem since Skylab.
Thought they'd had developed an adequate conditioning
program by now. Oh well, back to the drawing board as
the clock is ticking....JJ61
Read The Case for Mars by Dr. Robert Zubrin. Although criticized as an optimist by many, he has had a large impact at NASA and the development of the current Mars Design Reference Mission (DRM III). In the Case for Mars he outlines a way to have Mars-normal gravity ~1/3g in a spacecraft by a simple rotating tether. It is not complicated engineering nor mission critical if the tether fails.
I have read his book many times and he is right...
What we need instead of Ares I is an upgraded Ares V design, maybe another RS-68 or two, to get the thing over the 150mT hump. Use it as the only launcher and go Mars Direct (but with better, upgradeable architecture), let COTS handle the LEO stuff or put Orion on top of an Atlas or Delta launcher to get to the ISS.
We need to develop the Moon and Mars in parallel, not series.
I agree.. We should have never stopped the Apollo program...
If you select astronaut candidates at very young ages, you can place them into a drug and supplement regimen that would highly increase their bone growth and density during their developmental years.
Well, it worked in Gattaga!
True....
Yup. Artificial gravity solves the bone loss problem. Makes flight dynamics a bit more tricky, but the problems are not insurmountable.
Or a new NERVA!
Right now NASA is working on a plan to lanch and entire LA Fitness franchise toward Mars....
Blue pill for the Red planet.
Spinning to produce artificial gravity during a mission to and from Mars is at least as old as the writings on the subject by Werner von Braun.
Sounds like a job for Mr. Loobner, he was born without a spine you know...
If it isn't rockets keeping us from getting to Mars, it's something else. Might be life there. Radiation will fry their neurons. Their bones will disappear. Maybe they will fall off the edge of the world. It won't matter in the long run unless we repeal the Treaty.
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