Space anemia
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Would be interesting to run these tests on different groups experiencing varying degrees of gravity, on a spinning station perhaps, and see what's the minimum amount of gravity we can get away with while keeping side-effects to a minimum.
Long term tests would also be very valuable, 1-2 years.
You could imagine a system where you 'space elevator' objects and people via the connecting cabling, whilst pumping fluid to offset the mass. You would likely want each side to be manned by two people.
You could later add more modules if designed correctly too. They would likely approach and attach to the centre (in a pair, one either sude), match the spin and then slot into their respective 'slots' and rotate on an arm.
Otherwise the difference in gravity acting on different sides of the body and more importantly the Coriolis forces would wreak havoc and cause more harm than good.
Everything in chemistry is equilibrium-driven, so I can readily see some process evolving with the assumption of X units of some chemical flowing through this system, and trying to restore homeostasis in space by increasing hemolysis.
I was imagining intracellular processes being effected. There are such processes in plants that are usually used for steering. In animals cells, if such thing exists, it may be minor efficiency changes in processes that add up to diverging from homeostasis.
And I don't think this is a novel observation on my part, but it does make me feel better when I have to refactor code when my assumptions turn out to be wrong.
If/when Starship becomes viable, a real space station becomes a real possibility.
As I read once, solar / cosmic ray radiation shielding isn't about thick lead armor, instead an envelope/shield of air/water vapor that is a 100m thick works better. Is that still the thought on practical radiation shielding in space?
Is there a "fast fix" for treating anemia? Because if humans do get there and land on a surface, this will probably be required.
From reading the article, we don't know why it's happening. So we don't know how to treat it yet.
Really? Where have you been for the last two years?
On the other hand, it does fully supports your hypothesis that the psychological stress will be huge.
Even the biosphere-style experiments, there's always the subconscious knowledge that you can make a call and bail at any time.
That's very different than knowing you have no lifeline. Les Stroud from Survivorman talks about how on one of his stints, he tested the emergency walkie/satellite phone or whatever and got nothing. So he's got some idea.
There are people out there who can do it, but it takes a special breed.
So yeah, take Covid stress, and like turn it up to 11.
People on death row meet your criteria and probably endure more stress and a lot of them don’t develop psychiatric disease.
It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the idealized Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes ~8.6 months, but reality is both a lot more messy and more amenable to optimization.
Just to take this year's launch window as an example:
The absolute lowest launch Δv trajectory is about 390 days, at 3.73km/s. This is obviously unworkable.
However, if you limit yourself to the lower, faster half of the porkchop plot, you'll find that the lowest Δv trajectory is ~200 days, at 4.3km/s.
If you are willing to spend 5km/s, you can bring the trip time down to ~150 days.
And if you have a fully retanked starship in orbit (assumptions: 250t mass at burnout including payload and landing fuel, 1200t tanks, 365s average Isp. These are very conservative, and will probably all be improved upon before any trip to mars is realistic.), which nets you 5615m/s, you can push that down to 130 days.