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Search didn't show any topics for "artificial gravity" (where's that improved search Josh?) so here's one for this important subject.
It's known that a six month mission to Mars in zero g will degrade the health of the crew. What's perhaps even more serious is that it's not known what effect 500 days in 0.38g Martian gravity will have on their health.
Providing artificial gravity by spinning the crew vehicle has been proposed to reduce the risk during the transists, but such a solution is hard to achieve on the Martian surface unless a centrifuge is used.
A recent Space Show (87 mins downloadable audio) interviews two experts in this field, lots of information.
(edit: fixed link to audio)
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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Providing artificial gravity by spinning the crew vehicle has been proposed to reduce the risk during the transits, but such a solution is hard to achieve on the Martian surface unless a centrifuge is used.
I agree with you. Artificial gravity would greatly reduce risks and increase capabilities.
But the thing about it is, that you must have large structure to reduce number of rotations to a reasonable level (Coriolis forces). That means heavier ship with an added complication that it becomes very difficult to aerobrake. That means extra fuel for propulsive breaking. If you also want to use this ship on the return trip back, then the propellant needed fast becomes unreasonable. So, the cost (vastly increased IMLEO and complexity) outweighs the benefits.
That is true, if you use high thrust, low isp engine (chemical, NTP). If you would use low thrust, high isp engine (NEP, SEP) and create sensible architecture, then you can do propulsive breaking into orbit. High isp also means that you can build a lot of redundancies into your ship, since the propellant expended would not be such an issue any more. That means the possibility for reuse,more effective (heavier) radiation shielding, lot’s of space (which can also include place to grow food) and vastly reduced risks. The IMLEO would be in the same range (300 – 500 MT), but the capabilities would be vastly superior. The only question would then be, what provides the power to electric thrusters. Nuclear would be simpler to construct, but would be more difficult to fund (politics – NUCLEAR! RTG "difficulties" would be nothing compared to MW sized reactor in space), Solar would be technically more difficult to build and use, but would be politically more acceptable. It could be either of them and could be easily upgraded from SEP to NEP for deep space missions. It could be even upgraded to high thrust, high isp propulsion (GCR,..), but I don't expect to see them anytime soon.
Everything in this requires a lot more development then it would in simple (DRM III) program, but those capabilities would enable long term cost reductions that the simple program would not allow. It would allow easy expansion in size of the crews and time spent in space. It would be also something that would be more like sci-fi and less like “hey, we did that 30 years ago”.. It would be easy for NASA to say: “we learned so much from ISS (yeah, right), now we will create something better: SPACESHIP (as opposed to Apollo 1.01)”..
Apparently, nobody used the fraise “artificial gravity”, but this was discussed recently in SEP mission to Mars.
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Thanks for the link to the previous discussion, note also the link to the interview has now been fixed.
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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