Wait, what? Everything else was worked out, but NASA just went "hold on, we can't go to Mars just yet until we figure out what to do if an astronaut gets kidney stones on the way"?
Did the writer just throw this in to make the procedure seem more hip and exciting?
> Because space travel makes astronauts prone to kidney stones due, in part to bone demineralization from weightlessness, they are at increased risk. The NASA evidence base and publications note that astronauts have had more than 30 instances of kidney stones within two years of space travel. Medical assistance is a formidable challenge for those orbiting this planet or heading to other solar system destinations.
https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/keeping-kidney-stones-bay-durin...
Personally, I don't even like roller coasters.. I'd probably take a kidney stone to avoid having to go to space
I'm sure I'll end up there sooner or later though, that's where all the jobs are going to be
At any rate, hydronephrosis is the real thing to fear in most cases.
I know smaller craft can’t do this but we can always do a long tether with a counterweight.
(My personal pet idea is to go for super low gravity like .05G to start out to simplify things. You still get to walk around, go to the bathroom, spill liquids and clean up, cook, etc. )
This podcast covers a lot of the status on international studies for artificial gravity.
"Now we did try to fly a centrifuge on station around 2009 or 2010. And again, it was the same international community and we put together an international proposal to do it on station. And it turns out after a lot of hemming and hawing and the U.S. was going to provide the crew and the integration, the Japanese were going to fly it and the Europeans were going to pay for the device and have it built, and flight certified. It turns out that the station really isn’t designed for that much vibration. So instead of just having a person laying there, we were going to have a person with a cycle ergometer that would spin and do the ergometer. And that much vibration was bad for the station and it was decided that you would have to have a very expensive vibration isolation system that the Europeans weren’t willing to pay for to be able to do it. So, we kind of lost the possibility of doing human centrifuge work on station at this time."
So it looks like this is the current issue, and there is a large amount of work going into the physiological side of research to find out exactly what amounts and methods of artificial gravity achieve desired results.
For a 50m radius don't you need about 10 RPM (rotation once every 6 seconds!)? That's actually right at the maximum dimension of the ISS, no?
And you're going to feel the gravity differential if you aren't exactly on the rim.
We'd have to get significantly better at building much bigger space structures before rotating them will be even remotely feasible.
What does this mean? Surely the average astronaut doesn't pass 30 kidney stones every two years, that's more than one a month. So it's either over a specific two year period (for every astronaut in space at the time, probably a lot?) or it's for a specific number of astronauts. Confusing sentence.
Given that astronauts are exceptionally physically fit individuals to start with, at least at the time of their space missions, this is probably quite significant evidence that space flight causes kidney stones.
[1] https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/Risks/risk.aspx?i=81
If you look at the medical risk matrix it puts the likelihood between 60% - 80% and consequence at "loss time injury or illness per OSHA criteria" On a score of 1 (least risky) to 25 (most risky), a 4x4 scores 22.
Now to your point about "guaranteeing" they would still go, they are allowed to waive these risks through a formal process. It tends to make managers squeamish though, because nobody wants to be the person who's signature is attached to a known risk that eventually causes a mishap.
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/s3001_guidel...
I don't think you even get free-return on most mars missions like you do with moon missions.
Only required for doctors staying over winter. Neat
"NASA does not mandate astronauts to undergo an appendectomy before embarking on a mission. This decision stems from the understanding that the risks associated with surgery frequently outweigh the potential benefits."
https://www.lunarsail.com/do-astronauts-have-their-appendix-...
decades*