Your links to articles about proposals for settlement of Mars (as opposed to just a visit) reminded me of OldFart1939's entire topic devoted to planning for an expedition.
I am suggesting as a first Starship Mission to the Red Planet Mars and having a crew composition of 17 astronauts
This is based on the "Triad concept," and a somewhat military style organization. There will be a relatively loose hierarchical structure, but there needs to be a leadership pyramid established before anyone sets foot inside a Starship.
Triads: Three astronauts with a particular set of skills assigned to complete a certain set of tasks; particularly important for working outside in the hazardous desert-like environment. It's not possible to find a single individual who has all the necessary skills that will be utilized when the skill set required is enormous. There also needs to be inspection of work done by at least a second individual when so much is "on the line." Medical skills are also sometimes requiring a second or third set of skilled hands.
What have I planned as the necessary sets of skills"
Leadership: A group commander and an assistant commander; both with great communications skills and abilities to do lots of data management. They will be tasked with work assignments and difference resolution. There needs to be a final authority when differences of opinion arise between crew members.
Geologist triad: They will be tasked with collection of samples and determination of WHERE to put the permanent habitation modules. Do studies of weight bearing capabilities of potential landing sites and layout of the landing complex. Search for water.
Construction and maintenance triads; there will be 2 of these because they will be the most important set of tasks needed to keep everyone else alive. Maintain the rovers, Set up a solar farm or a nuclear reactor system.
Scientist triad: a good biologist and microscropist to examine samples looking for signs of life, past and present; a chemist with skills in elemental analysis to determine the contents of various samples returned by the geologist triad. A molecular biologist with instrumentation skills (polarimetry, gas chromatography, HPLC, and other skills needed to analyze samples for signs of life).
Medical triad: One Surgeon, one GP, cross trained as a dentist, and one nurse with Nurse Practitioner certification.
OK, this is my baseline for a crewed mission.
Last edited by Oldfart1939 (2021-04-26 10:09:18)
(th)
]]>As few as 22 people could sustain a colony of pioneers long enough to establish a human presence on Mars.
That's the conclusion of a new study by a team of researchers in the US that used modeling and simulation to work out the minimum initial population size for a successful Mars colony that goes on to thrive.
That's a lot lower than a previous estimate of 110 people. The more the merrier, perhaps, though the travel bill for a trip to the Red Planet would skyrocket with every extra mouth to feed.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66740-0https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.05916
"Beyond mining a few basic minerals and water, the colonizers will be dependent on Earth resupply and replenishment of necessities via technological means, i.e., splitting Martian water into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel," the researchers write.
The only question is how much spin gravity is enough? We evolved at 1 gee, that is what our bodies were made for, but some lower number may be adequate. That question was never answered with real partial-gravity experiments. Which is now so very clearly the stupid research shortfall that it appears to be.
So, until it is answered, you provide 1 gee or pretty close to it. The gravity you get depends upon the spin radius and the square of the spin speed: a = R w^2. For convenience: gee = (R/56 m)(spin rate/4 rpm)^2.
There's a max spin rate you can use, for long term exposures, and it is a lot slower than what can be used in short-term exposures, such as carnival rides. The value is fuzzy, not very well-researched, but appears to be in the 3-4 rpm range range, maybe closer to 4 than 3 rpm, but who really knows?
In any event, if you take 4 rpm as max spin rate, then for 1 full gee, your spin radius is 56 m. Period. That plus the pre-conceived notion that only rifle-bullet spin can be used, led to the perception that we would have to build "Battlestar Galacticas" if we were going to include spin gravity, and nobody could afford that. Which in turn is why spin gravity was never researched - circular as that thinking is.
There is one other spin mode that nobody thinks about: baton spin (end-over-end). It is also stable, and if you only build the baton, you don't have to build a huge massive thing. The downside is very little volume at the ends where the full gravity exists. There is decreasing partial gravity toward zero at the spin center. It might or might not serve as a spaceship design, but it would certainly serve as an easy-to-build, relatively-cheap space station for researching partial gravity effects in orbit.
Think about it: 6 modules docked together end to end, each one 5 m diameter and 20 m long. That's a 120 m long baton. Spun up to about 4 rpm, the spin radius is 60 m to the outer end. The two end modules are pretty close to 1 gee at the ends and 2/3 gee near the docking collars, with maybe about 250-300 cu.m habitable internal volume each. The other 4 modules are the same sizes, with around 2/3 to 1/3 gee in the outer pair, and 1/3 to near 0 in the inner pair. Each cylindrical module could have perhaps 8 or 9 decks in it.
It wouldn't take all that long to see who stayed healthier in which modules.
GW
]]>pdf
THE CENTRIFUGAL SPACE STATION COMES FULL CIRCLE
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads … e86e1af65a
Science gave the centrifugal space station a fair attempt. Even though the centrifugal space station is no longer in NASA’s
foreseeable future, von Braun’s original attempts to kick-start a legitimate scientific proposal have nevertheless come full circle
with the return of the centrifuge to popular culture. Centrifugal artificial gravity makes its iconic appearance in Stanley Kubrick’s
1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which itself inspired more recent films like Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium (2013) with its orbital
habitat; Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014); and Andy Weir’s book and subsequent film, The Martian (2015).Whether or not the concept of the centrifuge arose because of the direct influence of popular culture, perhaps even at the behest of Wernher von Braun, is yet to be determined. But the cycle of fiction inspiring science—which in turn inspires fiction—continues, leaving almost a century of individuals whose imaginations
were captured by the idea. Who can say where those minds may
take us next?
https://www.universetoday.com/162643/a- … -the-moon/
A coronal mass ejection erupted from the Sun on October 28th, 2021, spreading solar energetic particles (SEPs) across a volume of space measuring more than 250 million km (155.34 million mi) wide. This means that the event was felt on Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which was on the opposite side of the Sun at the time. It was also the first time that a solar event was measured simultaneously by robotic probes on Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which included ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Eu:CROPIS orbiter, NASA’s Curiosity rover and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and China’s Chang’e-4 lander.
The ESA’s Solar Orbiter, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and BepiColombo missions were also caught by the outburst and provided additional measurements of this solar event. The study of Solar Particle Events (SPE) – aka. solar flares – and “space weather” phenomena are vital to missions operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – for example, crews living and working on the International Space Station (ISS). But it is especially vital for missions destined for locations beyond LEO and cislunar space, including Project Artemis and the many proposals for sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars in the coming years.
Gateway will come next and the Private sector and perhaps stations from other nations, Gateway is the first planned extraterrestrial space station, it will be placed in lunar orbit. Crewed flights to the Gateway are expected to use Orion and SLS. Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin stated that he is "quite opposed to the Gateway" and that "using the Gateway as a staging area for robotic or human missions to the lunar surface is absurd".
The ISS will continue until 2030
NASA proposes “hybrid” contract approach for space station deorbit vehicle
https://spacenews.com/nasa-proposals-hy … t-vehicle/
NASA is currently planning to operate the ISS to 2030. The other partners have also agreed to that timeline with the exception of Russia, which recently announced it would remain on the station to 2028.
quote from the Artificial Gravity thread
Study Investigates How Men and Women Adapt Differently to Spaceflight
https://www.nasa.gov/content/men-women- … adaptationsummary of the Sex & Gender work groups' major findings is listed below:
Orthostatic Intolerance, or the inability to stand without fainting for protracted periods, is more prevalent upon landing in female astronauts than in their male counterparts. One possible reason for this observed difference in orthostatic intolerance between the sexes is reduced leg vascular compliance, which was demonstrated in bed-rest studies – which is a ground analog for spaceflight.
Women have greater loss of blood plasma volume than men during spaceflight, and women’s stress response characteristically includes a heart rate increase while men respond with an increase in vascular resistance. Still, these Earth observations require further study in space.
The VIIP syndrome (visual impairment / intracranial pressure) manifests with anatomical ocular changes, ranging from mild to clinically significant, with a range of corresponding changes in visual function. Currently 82% of male astronauts vs. 62% of women astronauts (who have flown in space) are affected. However, all clinically significant cases so far have occurred in male astronauts.
Changes in function and concentration of key constituents of the immune system related to spaceflight have been reported. However, differences between male and female immune responses have not been observed in space. On the ground, women mount a more potent immune response than men, which makes them more resistant to viral and bacterial infections; once infected, women mount an even more potent response. This response, however, makes women more susceptible to autoimmune diseases. It is not clear if these changes on the ground will occur during longer space missions, or missions that involve planetary exploration (exposure to gravity).
Radiation presents a major hazard for space travel. It has been reported that female subjects are more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer than their male counterparts; hence radiation permissible exposure levels are lower for women than men astronauts.
Upon transition to microgravity after arriving at the International Space Station (ISS), female astronauts reported a slightly higher incidence of space motion sickness (SMS) compared with men. Conversely, more men experience motion-sickness symptoms upon return to Earth. These data were however not statistically significant, due both to the relatively small sample sizes and small differences in the incidence of SMS reported by the men and women astronauts.
Hearing sensitivity, when measured at several frequencies, declines with age much more rapidly in male astronauts than it does in female astronauts. No evidence suggests that the sex-based hearing differences in the astronaut population are related to microgravity exposure.
The human musculoskeletal response to gravity unloading is highly variable among individuals and a sex-based difference was not observed.
Urinary tract infections in space are more common in women and have been successfully treated with antibiotics.
There is no evidence of sex differences in terms of behavioral or psychological responses to spaceflight. Analysis of ISS astronauts’ neurobehavioral performance and sleep measures showed no sex or gender differences using the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) of alertness and Visual Analog Scales of workload, stress, and sleep quality. Since all all astronaut candidates undergo a robust process of psychological screening and selection, the likelihood of an adverse behavioral health condition or psychiatric disorder is greatly diminished.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/0 … e#comments
Colonizing Mars may require humanity to tweak its DNA
https://www.space.com/mars-colony-human … rades.html
2020 article
Genetic engineering may be a big part of our future on Mars
Tiny laser-propelled spaceships could travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond
https://www.space.com/laser-propelled-s … xploration
Brain-Computer Interfaces: Separating Fact From Fiction On Musk’s Brain Implant Claims
]]>Mans first journey to mars could be just a short round trip of 6 months out and 6 months back. Should this be the first step with a crew?
Russia tests monkeys for Mars trip
Why would we want to do this?
"People and monkeys have approximately identical sensitivity to small and large radiation doses,"