Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

RobS · 2004-03-27 01:20:18

Clark, I don't agree with you about the scenery. Earth has stunning vistas and half the beauty is the scale. Rocks can be incredibly beautiful; just look at the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. The Rocky Mountains are beautiful from a distance, and one is not making out individual trees. Arizona is beautiful, and more than half a mile away all one can see is ground, not vegetation. From the air, Arizona mostly looks plantless.

No, Mars can be beautiful. Mars is beautiful in many spots. The Mariner Canyons must be breathtaking.

I think a walk outside in spacesuit would satisfy me. The experience for me is mostly visual. I have a terrible sense of smell; I rarely smell more than one smell a day anyway.

As for at night, I don't go for walks at night on Earth very much, and many would regard walking in a big city as much more dangerous than a walk outside on Mars at night. Starlight would be enough if one were following a trail, the cold would not be a problem--the suits can be insulated plenty--and I suspect Mars will have GPS pretty quickly (all you need is three or four satellites) so you can't get lost. As for worrying about your suit; I suspect scuba gear is much more dangerous, and plenty of people find scuba diving very relaxing and enjoyable.

Crowding: We 21st century folks are spoiled. Cities, before the advent of public transportation, were incredibly crowded because everyone had to be able to walk to work. Ancient cities had population densities above 50,000 per square mile. And those cities were not very clean. People did not have toilets in their houses, so they used chamber pots and emptied them onto the streets every morning (in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the Middle Ages you opened the window and shouted "gardiloo!" and tossed out your piss; gardiloo comes from the French "gardez de l'eau," "watch the water!"). Ancient cities STANK. Ancient cities suffered from net population loss unless there was in-migration from the countryside because death from disease exceeded births. Ancient cities were built without building codes, so apartment buildings sometimes collapsed spontaneously. Ancient cities lacked fire departments, so sometimes the entire city burned down.

I remember once visiting Plimouth Plantation, a reconstruction of the 1620s village settled by the pilgrims in Massachusetts. A typical house was a log hut about 12 by 15 feet (4 by 5 meters). I walked in with two friends and the man and woman inside, dressed in period costume, welcomed us to their house, pointed out the dried corn and vegetables hanging from the rafters for winter, and mentioned that they lived in the one-room space with their seven kids. One of my friends then said (more frankly than even 17th century Englishmen would have been), "how do you ever have sex in here?" The two "pilgrims" didn't answer. Obviously, people did; the kids just learned to ignore it. A typical rural European peasant family had to bring their animals into the house as well in the winter, because they often didn't have barns! Besides, the animals provided a lot of body heat. Until about 1750, when iron stoves were invented, most houses were very cold and drafty in the winter. That's why beds came with elaborate drapes around them, to keep in the heat.

I see no reason to assume crowding on Mars will cause psychopathology. Martians will have less to worry about, in terms of health (issues such as depressurization, for example) than ancient urbanites, whose life expectancy was 30 or 35 years.

As for child bearing, this will be the subject of much debate, hand wringing, worries, studies of rats and other mammals, etc. Then someone will get pregnant anyway. Maybe some of the kids will die. Maybe the parents will have a higher cancer rate than their terrestrial cousins. Maybe whole body scans, laparoscopic surgeries on microcancers, and other techniques will raise life expectancy to about 80. The Martians probably won't be smoking cigarettes, after all, and alcoholism will probably be less.

But these are risks people take. In some parts of the world, people raise babies and toddlers on tiny houseboats. How many kids fall into the water and drown? Some. There are many parts of the world today where 30% of the babies die before their second birthday. Everywhere in the world, this was the case until about 150 years ago, Mars will certainly do better than that.

-- RobS

Byron · 2004-03-27 07:03:24

In keeping with Bill's original question, IF it was found that humans could not reproduce off-Earth, I would still support humans in space, although this factor certainly put a damper on things, as we'd have to give up the idea of permanent settlements on the Moon or Mars, etc. (At least until we're capable of building one-gee O'Neill colonies, anyway.) However, we would still be able to accomplish a great deal in space even without self-sustaining settlements...much like we do in Antarctica today.

This is how I believe humans-in-space will work out for the foreseeable future anyhow, as the benefits of sending people out to the planets and bringing them back on rotation would far outweigh the risks of keeping people alive and healthy (not to mention having and raising children) off-Earth for a lifetime. I don't see we couldn't develop speedy rockets capable of ferrying people around the Solar System in reasonable time frames, like weeks instead of months. Until we get a firm grasp of what it would take to live on another world on a permanent basis, people are going to stick with the "Antarctic" model...have people in space for scientific and exploratory purposes, but bringing them back to Earth after a set period of time.

So, in the case of my lifetime at least, the idea of people being able to reproduce in space is a moot point anyhow, as we have such a long ways to go just to get people to Mars in the first place ??? I'll be thrilled just to see someone actually go to Mars and come back to tell us about it...lol.

B

RobS · 2004-03-27 08:46:45

I suspect the biggest problem will be gravity. People on Mars will have weaker bones. Of course, they won't need as much bone strength while there, and their bones will be plenty strong enough for Mars. There's plenty of medical evidence that bone strength increases if they're stressed. Elderly people may actually find it easier to live on Mars because the lower gravity will decrease cardiovascular problems and osteoporosis. Possibly a six-month trip back to Earth in a spinning ship where it spins faster and faster as it returns home may restore some of the lost bone strength.

Radiation can be handled in architecturally appealing ways. Think: adobe. Houses made partly of brick or mud brick would provide excellent radiation shielding. Houses with heavy garden roofs inside domes would maximize space; the water and soil of the farm would provide radiation shielding for the living and working spaces below. If the buildings had very wide roof overhangs--say, two meters--people could sit outside in the shade of the roof and be in a fairly low radiation environment. Cafes and many houses could have central courtyards with wide roof overhangs, producing sunny environments full of plants with relatively low radiation exposure. Clothing styles may evolve that show lots of legs and arms, while covering radiation-shielding pads around the chest. Hats may make a comeback; you can put a lot of radiation shielding under a big, stylish hat!

Agriculture will not be simple. Regolith will have to be washed to remove salts. There may be problems with lead, cadmium, and selenium in the soils. Regolith without excess amounts of these elements will exist and can be found; genetically modified plants can be used to remove them also. Travel outside and walking will have hazards.

-- RobS

Bill White · 2004-03-28 21:58:37

Are the prospects of scientific discovery sufficient to motivate a human mission to Mars, absent hope for follow on settlements?

clark · 2004-03-29 09:22:36

Is there hope of a Mars Society without the Society? ???

Methane gas is neat, but is $50-100 billion really well spent to find out how a Martian microbe vents gas? Even if you think it is, what's the rush?

And Rob, don't get me wrong, Mars has beauty- but nothing like here on Earth. No matter how rose colored your glasses, Mars is less than Earth. Giant mountains, massive chasms, untouched prisitine beauty, stark and naked, the barren emptiness... it is breathtaking, but it all pales in what you might experience here on Earth.

Mars, space- it's sensory deprivation. No salty oceans to swim in, no rainbows or the soft spring wind on your cheek. No deep breaths where your smell is inundated with a thousand different scents, or the feel of dew drenched grass on your feet. There are no colors but red, orange, and brown.

Seeing a world from the sky, or different types of environment from different vantage points is one of the bounties of Earth. Mars, it's all the same. Like a world of water, only shifting dust instead of waves. There are features, yes, but even at your closest vantage point, even feeling the crunch of rocks beneath your feet, you're still a million miles away. You're still kept seperate from Mars. Nothing more than a picture outside a pane of glass.

To touch Mars, but never hold it. That's her song.

Bill White · 2004-03-29 22:23:37

=IF= the goal is settlement, then perhaps nation-states are the wrong entity to ask to accomplish that goal. By analogy, see this [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4615876/]piece which discusses the transition from state sponsored terrorism to society sponsored terrorism.

Perhaps governments (and NASA) will end up merely being the tool by which other groups accomplish space settlement.

clark · 2004-03-30 10:24:35

Bell is at it again, this time on Nuclear ion thrust...

The Myth of Low-Thrust Propulsion

[http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-04d.html]http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-04d.html

So the vision of huge ion-drive spaceships majestically cruising from Earth to Mars is another of those neat ideas from the 1950s that turns out to be unworkable in the real Solar System that we started to discover with Explorer I.
Project Prometheus is just what NASA says it is: a way to send big science payloads to the outer planets and Kuiper Belt and have lots of electric power to run them when they get there. It is not a faster/better/cheaper to send either people or cargo to the Moon or Mars.

Is it me, or does he seem to get more shrill with each passing article?

Euler · 2004-03-30 15:35:49

Of course a 100kw reactor does not have enough power to drive a manned spacecraft of useful size. But what about a greatly enlarged NEP, say with a megawatt reactor? The rule of thumb is that large nuclear reactors are more efficient and lighter than small ones, because many parameters like the thickness of the rad-shield and pressure vessel remain constant with size or scale up only slowly. So we might expect a super-Prometheus to have a somewhat higher power/weight ratio than the 100kw version now in development.
The problem here is than any performance increase due to the benefits of scale will start from a ludicrously low base. JIMO will weigh about 20 tons upon injection into LEO, and its thrust is so low that it will take 2.5 years just to climb up out of the Earth's gravity well and pass the Moon! Even if this time were cut in half, it would be too slow for manned missions, and even for delivering supplies to the Moon on a regular basis.

Even without the increases in power plant efficiency, a mission to mars could increase thrust by decreasing isp. The reduced isp engine would take substantially less than 2.5 years to get out of earth’s gravity well and it would still be much more efficient than chemical power.

Furthermore, there is a little problem with ion drive that you don't read about in the NASA press releases: the vital high-voltage parts of the thrusters gradually sputter themselves away into space like the filaments in vacuum tubes.
Even for a Mars mission, we needed to carry duplicate (and possibly triplicate) engines to replace the original engines which had a strictly limited life. It is not clear how the Prometheus Project intends to overcome this problem for the 10-15 years that typical outer system missions will last.

Most of the recent progress in ion engines has gone toward solving this problem. The current HiPEP engines have increased thruster lifetime by a factor of 5-8 since the ds1 ion engine.

SBird · 2004-03-30 15:46:13

That's correct. Current ion engines use a microwave heater to get the ions up to temp and avoid the use of electrodes. There's a charge neutralization electrode still needed but it doesn't see much ion erosion. Current ion engines are pushing into the 10-20,000 hours of continuous thrust regime. The efficiency has gone up ~30% and the thrust is about 10 times higher than the DS1 engine.

Ion engines are not a good way to move personnel around - the transit times are just too long. However, slow cargo missions don't need to worry about this as much.

~Eternal~ · 2004-03-30 19:22:41

Cloning & Artificial Wombs could easily solve that problem.

Mad Grad Student · 2004-03-30 22:15:09

I'm coming in kind of late, but I'll voice my opinion on a couple of subjects that seem to have come up. I don't see why Mars being unable to colonize would reduce the justification of going there. Would you go to the Great Barrier Reef to have children there and colonize it? Some people might, but the vast majority would go there for recreation or to study it or just to see what it's like, which incidentally falls under studying. Regardless of weither we can take over Mars we should go there.

Earlier someone mentioned something about the Mars Gravity Biosatellite not being able to yeild many answers about mammal development and birth in low-g because the subjects were mice, with low gestation periods. If this is a serious problem, why don't we move up to guinea pigs? Guinea pigs are already used for many experiments because their physiology is actually quite similar to humans. They get sick to the same diseases and a common problem is scurvy, or vitamin C deficency, just like it used to be for humans. Most importantly, they have a three month long gestation period because newborn guinea pigs are ready to go immediately out of the mother. I seem to remember that placental mammals are divided into two main groups, altricials and precoials (sp?). Altricial mammals, like mice, cats, and dogs, are born not very developed, eyes and ears shut, legs not developed, etc. By contrast, precoials, like whales, guinea pigs, and horses are up and running (Or swimming) within 20 minutes after their born. If we really want to push the limit we could try raising a few generations of bonobos on the ISS. Bonobos are offshoots of chimpanzees very similar to humans.

I really don't see many obstacles to birth and development in reduced gravity, you'd probably just adapt to it. At one time it was thought that people would go insane and their hearts would explode if they were exposed to zero gravity for more than a few seconds. We've had people living in space for more than a year at a time, you just adapt to the environment. A Mars colony would be even more friendly to new generations. Big domes, lots of space, and plenty of opportunities to get out make it easier. Radiation is probably not goint to be as big a deal as we make it out to be.

I know someone said that on Mars you could never go outside, and this is true, to an extent. Just what exactly is outside? Suppose you built a greenhouse several square kilomenters with the Martian soil as a floor. As you stroll around it would be just like a walk on the real Mars, except you could do it with as little clothing as you like. It all depends on your point of view.

Byron · 2004-03-31 04:41:06

I'm coming in kind of late, but I'll voice my opinion on a couple of subjects that seem to have come up. I don't see why Mars being unable to colonize would reduce the justification of going there. Would you go to the Great Barrier Reef to have children there and colonize it? Some people might, but the vast majority would go there for recreation or to study it or just to see what it's like, which incidentally falls under studying. Regardless of weither we can take over Mars we should go there.

Excellent point, Mad Grad. If we have the means to get people to Mars, we would also have the means to bring them back as well...and that's precisely what will happen in the early stages of human exploration of Mars...the first crew might stay six months or a year, follow-up crews might stay several years before being rotated back to Earth...but in all likelihood, they will come back at some point. But the point is, we can have a human presence on Mars and elsewhere in space without actually colonizing it, and that's probably what will happen long before anyone thinks of settling down on Mars for good.

I fail to see why going to Mars has to be a one-way trip for anyone...we just need to make rapid transit times a high priority As for actually having children on Mars (or elsewhere in space), hopefully that won't happen until 1) we know it'll be reasonably safe for mother and child and 2) the ability of that child being able to come back to Earth without undue health problems (at least until we're able to have big domes and the like.)

If it is discovered that it would be impossible to bring back a Martian-born child due to the lower gravity, I think that would preclude having children on Mars for a quite a while, due to the moral ramifications of having kids stranded over there for life, not to mention all the infrastructure that would be needed to raise children to adulthood on a Mars base, etc, etc.

We just need to figure out a way to get people to Mars and back, and to eventually be able to do this in weeks instead of months (i.e. fast rockets) and then take it from there depending on our collective knowledge of humans-in-space at the time...

B

RobS · 2004-03-31 10:40:12

Long before children on born on Mars, baby chicks and rabbits will be, because they'll be raised as food (eating plant waste and table scraps that otherwise will not be used). So we'll have a pretty good idea about the dangers to children.

As for walking around inside a dome, "outside" while inside, I am sure this will happen. People will want to be able to walk around in large spaces and agriculture will provide large spaces (though possibly with low roofs). The radiation environment if you were "outside" 24 hours per day would be something like 6 rems a year (I don't remember exactly; the figure's in Mars Direct). Under a heavy regolith shield, housing and work areas can probably be about 1 rem per year. Walking around an hour a day in a greenhouse won't add much to that; 1/24 * 6 = 1/4 rem per year. The earth's surface at sea level receives about 1/3 of a rem and high altitude cities (Denver) have 2/3 rem per year of exposure.

If people are concerned about radiation, though, a few centimeters of hydrogen-impregnated polyethylene can reduce some of the severe radiation. So I have this vision of Martian "fashion" in the future:

Women wearing big hats, like in the 19th century, with feathers and flowers on them, hiding a thick polyethylene shield

Men wearing top hats with wide brims with similar shields

Men and women wearing vests over their clothes when they go outside with thick shoulder and chest pads; they'd look like football players.

If this became culturally the norm on Mars, it might even influence terrestrial fashion (hats with brims are good to prevent exposure to ultraviolet, so have health benefits on Earth as well). It could even influence notions of beauty. In western society, women's breasts are the center of much of the conception of beauty, but if they are covered by six centimeters of polyethylene radiation shielding, legs and arms might become the aesthetic rage. Legs do not get cancer very often, after all. In other cultures, breasts are utterly unimportant aesthetically; some societies consider fat women the most beautiful because the weight indicates they were well-fed and healthy and thus able to bear healthy children. Who knows how Martian realities might even influence conceptions of beauty.

-- RobS

Ian Flint · 2004-06-28 22:50:27

For instance, powered formula would have to be kept on-hand (such as Enfamil) because mother's supply cannot always be relied on, can dry up, etc.

Under normal Earth conditions "drying up" is mostly a myth propogated by uninformed mothers and illtrained doctors (and possibly evil formula companies :angry: ).

Here's the average mother's scenerio:

Mother -- "Doctor, my baby just keeps breastfeeding all the time. Do you think he's getting enough milk?"
Doctor -- "Who knows, but just to be on the safe side, you had better suppliment with this free sample of Enfamil."

Two weeks later:

Mother -- "Doctor, I think my milk dried up."
Doctor -- "Well, that happens sometimes."

Now a knowledgable person would have advised the mother to continue nursing on demand. This is the best advise for several reasons, but the most basic are these:
1. Because the child was probably going through a growth spurt and simply needed to eat more often.
2. If the mother was having a supply problem, the only thing that would help would be to stimulate the mammary glands. More breastfeeding prompts the body to produce more milk. Supplimenting with formula prompts the body to stop producing milk. Period.

For some reason doctors don't learn this and mother's have forgotten. Good for the formula companies - bad for the babies.

My wife has breastfed all three of our children without any "supplimental" formula. I admit that maybe a percent or two of healthy women in the world may have real problems with it but it is mostly just bad advice that ruins breastfeeding for most babies. Here's a nice link:
http://www.lalecheleague.org/]http://ww … eague.org/

Sorry Cindy, I just couldn't let that comment go unchallenged. By the way, the shelf life of formula might become an issue if it could only be imported every two years.

Palomar · 2004-06-29 05:37:27

For instance, powered formula would have to be kept on-hand (such as Enfamil) because mother's supply cannot always be relied on, can dry up, etc.
Under normal Earth conditions "drying up" is mostly a myth propogated by uninformed mothers and illtrained doctors (and possibly evil formula companies :angry: ).
Here's the average mother's scenerio:
Mother -- "Doctor, my baby just keeps breastfeeding all the time. Do you think he's getting enough milk?"
Doctor -- "Who knows, but just to be on the safe side, you had better suppliment with this free sample of Enfamil."
Two weeks later:
Mother -- "Doctor, I think my milk dried up."
Doctor -- "Well, that happens sometimes."
Now a knowledgable person would have advised the mother to continue nursing on demand. This is the best advise for several reasons, but the most basic are these:
1. Because the child was probably going through a growth spurt and simply needed to eat more often.
2. If the mother was having a supply problem, the only thing that would help would be to stimulate the mammary glands. More breastfeeding prompts the body to produce more milk. Supplimenting with formula prompts the body to stop producing milk. Period.
For some reason doctors don't learn this and mother's have forgotten. Good for the formula companies - bad for the babies.
My wife has breastfed all three of our children without any "supplimental" formula. I admit that maybe a percent or two of healthy women in the world may have real problems with it but it is mostly just bad advice that ruins breastfeeding for most babies. Here's a nice link:
http://www.lalecheleague.org/]http://ww … eague.org/
Sorry Cindy, I just couldn't let that comment go unchallenged. By the way, the shelf life of formula might become an issue if it could only be imported every two years.

*Hi Ian.

I based my previous comments on years (16 and counting) of work as a medical transcriptionist.

You and your wife have been fortunate. Apparently many other nursing mothers are not -- if all the OB/GYN postpartum reports I've done are any indication.

Unless most of those doctors are/were in cohoots with the formula companies (I doubt it)...

--Cindy

Ian Flint · 2004-06-29 11:29:10

I know they're not knowingly in cohoots, just uninformed. Just ask one how many classes in college he took about breastfeeding, or how many books he has read on the subject.

I based my comments on 4 years of fatherhood, attending La Leche Legue meetings with my wife. The reason mothers at those meetings had trouble with their milk supply was bad advise from either doctors or family members. American society has become dependent on formula for no good biological reason. Mammals can breastfeed.

Ian Flint · 2004-06-29 11:34:13

Oh, about formula companies:

Did you know they hand out free supplies of formula in hospitals. This is a blatant (and very successful) attempt to make mothers' milk dry up. Moms don't want to waste the free formula (which tastes like crap, btw), so they use it and then can't understand why they can't produce breastmilk. It's insane!

Wiser countries have banned free samples of formula, and thus have a much larger population of breastfeeding mothers.

clark · 2004-06-29 11:45:31

Ian, resident Breast expert. :laugh:

Palomar · 2004-06-29 11:47:40

*Hi Ian:

Can you agree, however, that it would be a good idea to take powdered formula along during the first days of Marsian (or Lunar, etc.) colonization/settlement..."just in case"?

Non-lactating women can't breastfeed, as we both know. In the event a woman does have difficulty with lactation and she's the baby's only source of nourishment...well...

I think breastfeeding is beautiful and important. Lots of natural benefits with it too: Baby's stools are less malodorous; nursing often provides a natural contraception of sorts, etc.

But I've not given birth myself -- so, again, I'm just going on "what I've heard." And it's been quite some time since I've had a close relative or friend pregnant or rearing an infant.

--Cindy

Ian Flint · 2004-06-29 13:20:31

Can you agree, however, that it would be a good idea to take powdered formula along during the first days of Marsian (or Lunar, etc.) colonization/settlement..."just in case"?

Ok, I'll agree. But just a little. Formula should be treated like a lifesaving drug (not a wholesale food commodity), used only as a last resort.

Ian, resident Breast expert.

Ahh, if only...

Seriously though, my wife is a staunch supporter of breastfeeding and other natural parenting practices, so I can't hold my head up if I don't speak in her behalf every now and then. She wouldn't be caught dead on a message board with a bunch of space geeks, so I'll have to be the "resident Breast expert" until I can fully assimilate her.

Dook · 2004-06-29 15:21:12

If humans could not breed on mars terraform it anyway and make it a Jurassic Park. Maybe leave out the velociraptors this time though.

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#26 2004-03-27 01:20:18

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#27 2004-03-27 07:03:24

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#28 2004-03-27 08:46:45

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#29 2004-03-28 21:58:37

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#30 2004-03-29 09:22:36

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#31 2004-03-29 22:23:37

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#32 2004-03-30 10:24:35

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#33 2004-03-30 15:35:49

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#34 2004-03-30 15:46:13

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#35 2004-03-30 19:22:41

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#36 2004-03-30 22:15:09

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#37 2004-03-31 04:41:06

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#38 2004-03-31 10:40:12

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#39 2004-06-28 22:50:27

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#40 2004-06-29 05:37:27

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#41 2004-06-29 11:29:10

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#42 2004-06-29 11:34:13

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#43 2004-06-29 11:45:31

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#44 2004-06-29 11:47:40

Re: Suppose settlement was impossible - Do you still favor human missions?

#45 2004-06-29 13:20:31

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