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Quaoar

Member

Registered: 2013-12-13

Posts: 665

1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

We are dreaming on colonizing Mars and the Moon, but we still don't know if Mars 3.69 m/s2 of surface gravity acceleration is enough to keep people healthy and avoid all the nasty effect of a zero gee environment; and we are pretty sure that Moon 1.622 m/s2 is not enough.
So, how to keep healthy astronauts who are supposed to live some year in a Mars or a Moon base?

A proposed solution is "The Glass" a 400 m tall 100 m wide rotating habitat with the shape of a chalice, designed by Kajima corporation, with a parabolic section projected in a way that the sum of the centrifugal force vector plus the gravity vector is perpendicular to the wall.

https://gizmodo.com/japan-wants-to-brin … 1849163831

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-o5VR7LpELo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao-Pj8H4ta0&t=198s

Last edited by Quaoar (2022-07-12 04:02:54)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Re: 1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

For Quaoar re new topic .... Thanks for providing links to the rotating habitat concept you've described for Solar System bodies with mass less than Earth.

With any luck, a member might be able to create a rendering to share, or perhaps find one that could be copied from the links you've provided.

For RobertDyck ... the diameter appears to be 100 meters, which is larger than Large Ship, which is just under 80 meters in diameter (as I recall).

(th)

Quaoar

Member

Registered: 2013-12-13

Posts: 665

Re: 1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

For Quaoar re new topic .... Thanks for providing links to the rotating habitat concept you've described for Solar System bodies with mass less than Earth.

With any luck, a member might be able to create a rendering to share, or perhaps find one that could be copied from the links you've provided.

For RobertDyck ... the diameter appears to be 100 meters, which is larger than Large Ship, which is just under 80 meters in diameter (as I recall).

(th)

O'Neil Cylinder, Stanford Torus, Bernal Sphere... we have plenty of deep space habitat conceptual studies, but this is the first time I've found a land based habitat, designed to enhance the gravity of a celestial body to match Earth gravity.

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,776

Re: 1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

Artificial gravity provides partial protection for biology in space
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-artificia … space.html

Fruit flies are the ideal organism for this kind of research due to their similarities to humans. There's a significant amount of overlap between the cellular and molecular processes of flies and humans. Almost 75% of the genes that cause disease in humans are shared by fruit flies, meaning the more we learn about fruit flies, the more information scientists have to investigate how the space environment may impact human health. Flies also have much shorter lifespans—about two months and reproduce in two weeks. The three weeks the flies spend in space is equivalent to about three decades of a human's life, giving scientists more biological information in a shorter time span.

Understanding the gravity of the situation

In this study, scientists sent flies to the space station on a month-long mission in a newly developed piece of hardware called the Multi-use Variable-gravity Platform (MVP), capable of housing flies at different gravity levels. The flies in this hardware had access to fresh food as they lived and reproduced. By using distinct compartments, the MVP allowed for different generations of flies to be separated. On the space station, one group of fruit flies experienced microgravity similar to their human counterparts. Another group was exposed to artificial gravity by simulating Earth's gravity on the space station using a centrifuge—an instrument that spins to simulate gravity. While on the space station, cameras in the hardware recorded behavior of these "flyonauts.'" At different points in time, some of the flies were frozen and returned to Earth to study their gene expression.

After the flies returned to Earth, onboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule that splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, the flies were brought back to Ames for further analysis. Upon arrival, scientists at Ames worked around the clock for two days to sort the flies and perform behavioral and biochemical tests. The same analyses were run on a set of flies kept on Earth as a control experiment, to provide a baseline to compare the data from the "flyonauts."

This study was one of the first of its kind to take an integrated approach to how the space environment impacts the nervous system. Scientists looked at the fly behavior by observing movement of flies as they moved about in their habitat, changes at the cellular level in the fly brain, how gene expression modifications impact the nervous system, and more. Observed changes came in many forms, some easy to see simply by looking at the cameras included in the MVP's compartments, others that required further study on the return to Earth. The behaviors studied included inflight fly activity and climbing ability upon return to Earth. Flies have a natural response to climb up their container when tapped down, and this was used as a test of their abilities post-flight. Flies in microgravity were more active than those in the artificial Earth gravity, but also showed difficulty during this climbing test after returning to Earth.

More in-depth analysis on the ground immediately post-flight revealed neurological changes in flies exposed to microgravity. As the flies acclimated to being back on Earth after their journey, the flies that experienced artificial gravity in space aged differently. They faced similar but less severe challenges to the flies that were in microgravity.

older article

Study: Extended gravity-free stay leads to decrease in immune cells
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13056045

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-14 17:20:18)

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,365

Re: 1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

For Mars_B4_Moon re #4

Thanks for the extended excerpt from the link you provided!

That is a ** very ** interesting study!  Some missing detail that may be in the article is how the groups of flies "aged differently".

(th)

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: 1 gee artificial Gravity on Moon and Mars surface

Nasa does know the effects of microgravity experimentation that has been carried out onboard the ISS. They have been doing so for the last decade or more and yet they have built nothing to simulate the 1 G man seems to require.
Nasa has done a variety of experiments to find out the extent of that damage to the genetic material contained within each cell of the body. The yearlong twin experiment showed that more like 7% changed and I am sure that it will be more without any correction through medication.