You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: How would the low gravity of MARS affect the colonists' bodies and genomes and how can we fight it - Colonization of MARS Series
Let me nitpick on the part of low (Mars) gravitation effect on human body. If I understand correctly you took the problems that microgravity (weightlessness) throws at human body and then made an implicit assumption that they will appear in low gravitation too, only to a lesser degree maybe.
Well, the problem is that we simply don't have enough data to interpolate between 0 g and 1 g, because the longest stay in low gravitation that humans experienced was little over three days in our Moon's 0.16 g (Apollo 17). We can only speculate about Mars gravity effects on human body, but I wouldn't call it science.
Thanks for the nitpicking. I have always said that the research is currently lacking (we had many years of less than adequate funding) and this is the purpose of the series, to get more exposure and maybe motivate some people to actually follow a career in space.
I have seen your point of view during my documentation and I totally agree to it, we don't have enough data to draw a conclusion, but the scientific method also allows for extrapolation and creation of "possible" or "probable" outcomes, but can also prove me wrong. This is why I didn't insist on this idea very much and tried to focus on methods to generate artificial gravity.
Until we actually put people on Mars and monitor them, fetal growth and everything else, we have no way to be sure of the real impact on humans.
A precautionary approach would be to be prepared for this rather than assume nothing will happen.
Thanks for dropping by!
I do agree with precautionary approach to living in low gravity being the best and farthest conclusion that we can make from the scarce data points gathered so far. Now the best course of action from here would be to test long-term (several months long) effects of low gravity on human body in a specialized mini-station in low Earth orbit. You don't need to build the huge Space Odyssey style rotating structure for this purpose. A single module the size of Destiny lab tethered to a counterweight and spun enough to simulate 1/3 g is all that you need. Sadly nobody from NASA to Zubrin to Musk has serious plans of doing low gravity research before heading to Mars. Maybe an interim step of semi-permanent Lunar base is not such a bad idea even though it would postpone the actual trip to Mars.