by Daniel Relph

Created on: April 02, 2010

No, the dangers to humans can be mitigated. With the right space ship and crew travel to Mars could be overcome the known dangers. Of course, space travel to the Red Planet will still be dangerous; after all, human travel to Mars would be a first and anything that is done the first time involves unknowns. We can never know everything that can go wrong, but we have ascertained many of the dangers and know they can be overcome.

The first and most dangerous problem comes from the long term exposure to a low-gravity environment. This involves loss of bone density, atrophy of muscles, and loss of orientation causing motion sickness. A mission to Mars would take about six months of space flight one way. In this amount of time the astronauts would need time to recover before he or she could start exploration; this could take several weeks. Obliviously, the success of the mission depends on overcoming this problem.

In Star Trek the spaceships have a gravity generation devices; and, in the early 1990s a Russian scientist, Eugene Podkletnov, claimed to have made such a device using a spinning superconductor producing a powerful gravitomagnetic field. No one has duplicated his results, but in 2006 the ESA claimed to made a device the was capable of generating a 100 millionths of a g. Obviously more research needs to be done in this area, but no gravitation generating device will be available in the near future.

At this moment to lessen the effects of a zero gravity environment we have exercise and conditioning equipment on the space station. Larger more complicated equipment could be used on a Mars spaceship. The main candidate would be a circular cage something like a wheel you see in a rodent cage where the astronaut runs around the inside. Exercise equipment will be used, but they only lessen the effects of zero gravity; we need a more effective way to prevent bone density loss and muscle deterioration.

One way we could do this is to use centrifugal force to simulate gravity. The trouble is that the rate of turning cannot exceed 2 RPMs, or revolutions per minute, because of the coriolis effect. Basically, the coriolis effect is when the head is moving faster than the feet. This causes stress within the body where it acts mainly on the inner ears causing dizziness, nausea, and disorientation. This effect can be lessened by decreasing the rate of spin. A rate of spin of 7 RPMs universally causes trouble, but when the rate of spin is decreased to 2 RPMs there seems to

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>