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 Earths atmosphere but theres 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.
Weve had 60 per cent argon in the capsule. The rest was oxygen and nitrogen. Weve 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 cant be compared with the cocktail of gases weve 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.
Me too! Seems we need the competition or we're quite willing to sit on our hands and do nothing for forty years. I want progress in space exploration, period, and if this is what it takes, so be it, I'm sad to say.
Thanks for explanation.
We do have a form of artificial gravity available: centrifugal force. Just spin the ship, or better yet attach it to a tether with a counterweight. It produces constant accelleration which is no different than gravity. In the movie “mission to mars” they used a rorating centrifuge, but critics said it would have been too small to be of practical use.
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