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Ideally most of us would prefer to see some sort of psuedo gravity on any Earth-Mars mission or transit if a base or colonies is established. But the question is just how much is enough. Some, call it .1G would most likey make housekeeping and basic ship or cycler operations a whole lot easier. But do we need to go to one full Martian G? Can we get away with less? Or do we need more? Opinons please.
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I think ideally, if possible, would be recreating 'Mars-g' so the astronausts would have their 'Mars legs' from day one when they land. Having to adapt to another g could be arguably more or less inefficient, even dangerous the initial days on the ground, because it will probably involve a lot of setting up complicated or bulky equipment.
OTOH, the Moon travellers seemed to do ok from day one (they had to, heh) but that could be because they were relatively fresh out of the simulation tanks on Earth, the voyage being a short one, their trained reflexes still pumped... A 6-month or longer mission to Mars could give a different result...
And... again, OTOH one could get away with a lot less, in transit. you get ample time to learn your ship's innards /real good/ so probably once on Mars, different gravity wouldn't take too much effort to adapt, as long as you're fit, and you can spend the first day inside, getting your 'Mars legs'...
Flights in the Vomet comet and follow-up planes actually showed it was easier to adapt (read: work) to Martian g than Lunar g, the latter being a bit 'clumsy' to work in etc...
Hmmmm. i'd say: as low as is possible, health-wise. (how low is that?)
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If using artificial gravity it is also possible to vary it by spinning faster. Just before descent you can spin up to an artificial gravity above 1 G to test the astronauts. Duyring the missiion I guess .25 G would be sufficient to decelerate bone deterioration.
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IIRC, there are serious limits re: max artificial g. It's quite hard to get up to higher g's, either engineering wise or physical (people getting disoriented, coriolis forces, different g forces between head and feet etc...
imagine a fairly big hab spinning fast enough to go > 1 g, that's a lot of force you apply on the structure....
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If we do it right any ship designed to do artificial g should be able to do all of the above.
The real question is how long it will take to adapt to various gees. Would it be best to to do a gradual change to Mars G as soon as we leave LEO? Or make the switch in the last couple weeks of the journey, so that their used to it but still have much of their strength.
Long duration Lunar missions would be easier with some place to recoup.
I suspect the successor to the ISS will be built to answer many of these questions.
"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane
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bump
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