Posted on 04/29/2008 10:47:54 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Air is crucial to human life, and the absence of a breathable atmosphere is one of the main obstacles to discovering other planets. Russian scientists have reproduced a gas mixture that human beings may breathe on the way to Mars and when on the Red Planet.
Staff at the Moscow Biomedical Problems Institute have constructed an experimental capsule and reproduced within it the conditions that might be encountered during a mission to Mars.
The gas inside accounts for only one per cent of the Earth’s atmosphere but there’s plenty of it on Mars as the gas inside is argon.
Mixed in the right proportion with oxygen, it can secure reliable supplies of breathable air.
”We’ve had 60 per cent argon in the capsule. The rest was oxygen and nitrogen. We’ve been testing how humans would react to this mixture of gases and whether they would still be able to fulfill their duties under the psychological and physical pressure,” said project head, Aleksandr Dyachenko.
The ten-day experiment is now officially complete and volunteers say the gas mixture inside the capsule is totally different from the air outside.
“When the hatchway opened I could feel how different the air was. It actually smells. It can’t be compared with the cocktail of gases we’ve had in there,” said volunteer Roman Chernogorov.
Two more experiments are being planned: one for 120 days and another, a real-time simulation called Mars 500, will confine volunteers in the capsule for 500 days.
until we develope different propulsion I think space travel in a vacuum for 500 days with no possible rescue will be very very dangerous
I wish they would reverse engineer Bob Lazaar’s gravtiy propulsions systems he saw while working at area 51 and grrom lake
seriously, I do
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Good for the Russians. Hope there are no ill effects.
...It is the red planet afterall.
I wonder how much methane was released into that mixture by the end of the 10 days.
First they better fix the problems with their Soyuz spacecraft, used for 40 years now. The last two landings have not gone well - the one last week was probably a millimeter away from catastrophic disaster.
What’s the point of this testing?
Humans still need oxygen even if you mix it with argon, neon, krypton or xenon.
I was wondering that myself.
It is possible that the use of such a dense gas would reduce atmospheric loss through leakage, or by its use less gas would be needed to replace gases that do leak out.
It is interesting, though.
Carrying enough oxygen along for such a trip would be difficult enough but to carry all the other gasses we normally breathe would compound the problem. Any vehicle used to transport people to Mars will have to have some sort of electrolosis set-up. There IS oxygen on Mars, just not enough to support human life. It can be concentrated, perhaps by breaking down the water in the ice-cap, and mixed with the native argon to give the explorers something to breathe while they’re there.
Lots of luck with that. Gravity is also crucial to human survival. Until artificial gravity can be produced on vessels that transport humans to and fro, we are stuck on the little blue ball.
Red Planet Ping.
Right, oldfart is correct, IMO; it’s a weight reduction measure. You can carry all the air the crew will need for two years, or you can try to “live off the land,” so to speak.
We have oxygen generators. That’s no problem. And Mars also has oxygen locked up on the surface that we can get to. But you don’t want the astronauts to breathe pure oxygen for two years, so what do you mix it with to make a safe artificial air substitute?
Mars is nitrogen poor, which is the main component in Earth’s atmosphere. So what do you do? I guess you could carry all your nitrogen with you, or you could try to find a substitute. Turns out, Mars has lots of argon and argon looks pretty harmless.
Problem is, nobody’s ever tried breathing a 60% argon mixture for two years straight. What would it do to a person? I’d hate to be the guinea pig. I hope they’ve done some animal testing...
I have some instant powdered water I’ll sell them. Maybe they can figure out what to mix it with.
Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
It’s a very special, dare I say unique, little blue ball.
Argon in and of itself can’t cause any problems because it’s inert. But the lack of nitrogen and the other trace gasses we’re all used to might cause some difficulty. The 500 day experiment should bring that out though.
My national pride makees me a bit jealous of the Russians in this endeavor but I still hope they’re successful. As someone else pointed out earlier, they need to fine-tune their re-entry and landing sequences first.
Another thing I’m almost certain someone else is thinking about— when the need comes to re-supply a colony up there it would be best if it was done with a drone ship controlled from earth until it got into Mars orbit and then handed off to someone on the ground there. There’s a lot of lag time between the time we flip the switch on earth and the light goes on on Mars.
There were no viable rescue strategies planned for Apollo missions either. Those guys were on their own with the understanding that if something went wrong, they would be pretty much screwed.
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