Posted on 09/22/2006 1:02:43 PM PDT by raygun
Edited on 09/22/2006 1:05:42 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper collapsed twice during a welcome-home ceremony on Friday, a day after returning to Earth from a 12-day mission on space shuttle Atlantis.
Stefanyshyn-Piper, who was on her first spaceflight and made two long spacewalks to perform work on the International Space Station, had "a couple of small dizzy spells" while speaking during the ceremony at Ellington Field in Houston, said NASA spokeswoman Lynnette Madison.
The commentator also said that after coming back from space astronauts also have a tendency to drop things, i.e., they get used to parking things in mid-air, and that's not how things work here on Earth. It takes them a while to get used to that again; it sort of becomes a habit rather quickly.
Sounds like the powers that be need to postpone the welcoming ceremoniesy for these events until the astronauts have had a chance to rest and gain their earthly bearings.
Pregnant..the first space baby....YES
My thinking was more plausibly along lines of long-term exposure to unusually large concentrations of extra-terrestrial gas.
Isn't that happen when we have to watch Chris Matthews?
did she have outercourse?
Ugh!
I have no problem sending women into space (I think it's rather cute), but do we have to send hyphenated feminists? Couldn't she just go by "Heide Piper" and make life easier on everyone?
ping
Actually she does in person.
Hilarious.
By all accounts she is a great spacewalker and she got the job done. I hope this won't affect her future in the program.
Yeah.
You know, Heinlein broached the subject years ago in his novels, but its going to definitely become a problem when we colonize the moon. When humans begin to breed on the moon, a whole slew of issues are going to crop up. A new species of human will evolve into being as a result of moving off of Terra Firma.
Will hmans still be breeding by that time? I'm wondering what form we will have assumed by then. Once the network interface is implantable, I'm sure that some wouldn't want to bother with the inconvenience of a mortal body.
Lunarites will scorn the Offworlders, and Earthers of all color will sneer and condescend their attitudes against Lunarite parasites. Initially extra-terrestrial colonies will be dependent on Earth for everything, and Imperial Earth will exploit its colonies for whatever it can. Trust me when I say that Colonites will be second-class Earth citizens.
Lunarites will despise the oppression stemming from Earth government politically and bureaucratically, in addition to the heavy hand of gravity and the rank, dank and steamy soup of atmosphere on Earth, Lunarites will shun visiting Earth. Eventually people will live their entire lives without any first hand experience of life on Earth.
No point in my rehashing what Heinlein already wrote copious treatises on. Nevertheless, and that notwithstanding, the fact of the matter remains that a mere 16 days in space is sufficient of an absence from Earth to at least show the very tip of the iceberg of the ramifications of going off-world.
If humans want to travel to Mars, there's some serious consequences to that to be thought out. One of the ramifications in mitigating those consequences will pertain to ship design, i.e., artificial gravity. While such can be alleviated with clever design and engineering, gravity will prove to be a simultaneous boon and bane with respect to extended exposure to lunar gravity.
At first there will short rotations of 6 months to a year (later progressing to two years) on the lunar colonies. But eventually pregnancy will become an issue (necessitating an early return to Earth), but eventually there WILL be the first off-world birth. And the ramifications and consequences of returning an infant born on the Moon to Earth are at best unknown. Nevertheless, no great leap is needed to understand that plausibly complications could be quite severe.
The question resolves down to what about a growing population of people born off Terra Firma? Admittedly, this is a problem that is still some time off in the future, but it is an issue that will need to be addressed sooner or later (if Man has any real desire to move into space).
Frankly, none of this will ever truly become a problem, in that I don't believe that Earth's socio/political/economic problems will ever conceivably allow use of the economic resources required for such an endeavor in our lifetimes. Moreover, it is my fervent belief that the Second Coming is much too imminent for any of these intellectual debates to be anything more than a curiosity.
Moreover, it is my fervent belief that the Second Coming is much too imminent for any of these intellectual debates to be anything more than a curiosity.
Yep, they felt that way back in 1492 also.
Do you care to digress with me? What's the point of this forum? My feeling is that if one can't make that connection with the intent of this board, then quite frankly, it shouldn't be posted (or if it is posted, then immediately relegated to the back-room of "chat").
If you make some sort of parallel in your mind between "1492" and the Age of Discovery and that of present day, YOU ARE DELUSIONAL.
There is no way in the near conceivable future that Man is moving to either Lunar or Mars environments.
Look, socio-politico-economically this thing is a sink-hole. No way in hell will this result in anything but a bunch of rancor. I got into this "discussion" with esteemed members of my local astronomy club. I broached the issue one day at a conference, and once I got two parties attacking each other (and I realized there was no hope of reconciliation between the two views of automated/robotic vs. human exploration), I left.
"...If you make some sort of parallel in your mind between "1492" and the Age of Discovery and that of present day, YOU ARE DELUSIONAL.
There is no way in the near conceivable future that Man is moving to either Lunar or Mars environments...."
Well, we all have our delusions, just as people had them in 1492, and the Age of Discovery.
There were people awaiting the "second coming" five hundred years ago, so perhaps there is a thread of continuity there.
As for us moving to other environments, either in the near or distant conceivable future, we either adapt and move outward or face extinction.
t.
Perhaps if the government alone does it, it will be a sinkhole. But The government is no longer doing this alone http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1706980/posts
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