NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 3

[Robotbeat]

Imagine the huge hurdles that ancient humans had as many of them left Africa. Traveling vast, vast distances through a medium that would suffocate them in seconds and for which they had not evolved (the ocean). Traveling to frozen lands where a couple minutes of unshielded exposure would also be fatal. & to do all this without the benefit of modern technology or written language or modern science. Yet indigenous people all around the world developed ways (pre-metallic technology, social technology, agriculture, hunting techniques, fire, etc) to do it.

Mars is easy in comparison.

I’m sorry, but this is totally misleading.  Every environment Homo sapiens sapiens settled on Earth had a breathable atmosphere, could support fire, and had naturally occurring food sources.

Bare humans plucked from Africa and placed on the ocean would be in an environment where they cannot breathe, fire can’t be supported, and food is unavailable by usual techniques. Technology and skills such as swimming and boats had to be developed in order to allow survival. In high altitude regions which are settled, like the Andes or the Tibetan plateau, unadapted humans would die. In the artificial environments which we create on ISS, etc, there’s no problem for sea level adapted humans without any adaption.

Additionally, there’s actually very little food that can be consistently digested by modern humans without processing. From trips to Indonesia, I know that many of the plants/tubers that local indigenous people relied on as staples could actually kill you if not processed with technology (cooking is a super important technology, enabled by fire). And many places would be uninhabitable without the technology of agriculture and the technology of domesticated plants and animals. The Polynesians, for example, were able to spread all over pacific islands that had little to no naturally occurring food suitable for human consumption because they brought a specific set of domesticated plants and animals and insanely productive agricultural techniques along with them. This is very analogous to space travel.

Nowhere on Earth is there an environment where persistent radiation from the sky will cut your lifespan to a fraction of its potential

first of all, that isn’t true on Mars either given typical times that people spend outside (just 7%). This is one of the things I’m talking about with respect to misinformation. Radiation just isn’t that bad on Mars. SECONDLY, solar radiation in the form of UV would definitely impact lifespan if I was unprotected in many areas of the Earth. “Mountain men” who live solitary lives in the wilderness often come back to civilization with horrible skin cancers on their face at older ages. These are sometimes fatal and often debilitating or disfiguring.

or where the gravitational field induces major developmental defects in mammalian foeti and juveniles.

This has not been established for Mars level gravity!!! Quit exaggerating to the point of straight up lying!

  The health threats at Mars (and on the Moon) are not only quantitatively much higher and more difficult to overcome,

LOL wrong

they strike much more deeply at the underpinnings of Earth biology and that makes them qualitatively different, much more pernicious, and more fundamentally dangerous to human health.

Absolutely false. Even on ISS, which is a much worse environment than a typical Mars base would be, astronauts live for a year without life threatening problems. Same is not true for most places on Earth for exposed humans! Living exposed on a raft for that long in the ocean would probably kill you unless you adopted techniques that people who DO live on boats have adopted.

But we need to be sober about the threats and realities here.

it helps to not exaggerate or straight up lie about the state of the research!

The Moon and Mars are nothing like accidentally tracking an animal herd to a new continent, Polynesian island hopping, or even an ice age Europe.  These environments are deadly in ways and magnitudes that no settled environment on Earth is or ever was.

Absolutely wrong. Modern humans with all advantages of science and technology are far better prepared than humans who settled the oceans, the deserts, the high altitude regions, the polar regions of the Earth.

[yg1968]

And the negative impacts of low-g on mammalian foetal and juvenile are known:

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/2/109/htm

Those studies are about zero-g, not partial G.

I am not sure if this make senses but someone on Reddit was suggesting that a gravity vest to make the person heavier might help mitigate some of the gravity problems (e.g., bone loss). That's obviously speculation but it's interesting speculation!

[Robotbeat]

Yup. I don’t know anyone who advocates for settling in pure microgravity. It’s effectively a strawman argument.

[Robotbeat]

Claiming that it’s safe for families to live out entire lives and bear/raise children in that environment is a ridiculous lie.

Where did I make that claim?? It is you who lie!

It’s like claiming you can’t live in Minnesota because raising a family without clothes or shelter in a frozen wasteland is instant death. Humans CREATE safe environments & technology to enable safe living in harsh environments.

Maybe YOU lived in a climate like Southern California where there is balmy weather year round and nature isn’t usually trying to kill you, but I was born into the bitter cold where weeks would pass without the temperature getting above 0F, where everything outside was frozen and dead (and you would die within a couple minutes, too, without technology), where your eyes would be blinded from the snow without countermeasures, where the very air would freeze your lungs if not protected by appropriate garment technology.

The breadth of human experience is so much greater than the comfortable environments we know of today in modern air conditioned cities. Our ancestors would laugh (and then cry) at how soft we have become living in comfort, how feeble in our great wealth, and how cowardly in our ambitions.

[VSECOTSPE]

Bare humans plucked from Africa and placed on the ocean

This never happened.  The population that settled the Polynesian islands started in Taiwan, not Africa.

would be in an environment where they cannot breathe, fire can’t be supported, and food is unavailable by usual techniques.

I can’t believe I have to point this out, but the atmosphere above the Pacific is breathable, the ancient Polynesians brought fire on their boats, and in addition to bringing chickens and foodstuffs, they were able to fish the open ocean.

In high altitude regions which are settled, like the Andes or the Tibetan plateau, unadapted humans would die.

The peoples of the Andes and Tibetan plateau have genes that allow them to get more energy out of the thinner oxygen levels at those altitudes.  Those genes were created by mutations and then selected for over thousands of years of evolution.  Natural selection involves a lot of death.  Those without these genetic advantages died earlier on average and did not pass on their genes.  Even if we could purposefully do this at the Moon and Mars, it would be ethically monstrous to do so.  This isn’t Dune.

But we can’t do that at the Moon or Mars anyway.  We’re not talking about slight differences in respiration and blood that allow one population to outgrow another at a particular altitude.  We’re talking about extreme radiation from the skies that causes deep tissue damage and induces cancers in any Earth-based biology.  We’re talking about low-g environments that induce severe defects in most mammalian foeti.  There are no latent mutations in the human genome that will mitigate those hazards.

In the artificial environments which we create on ISS, etc, there’s no problem for sea level adapted humans without any adaption.

For a year.  Maybe two or three.  But not for a lifetime.  And not for having children.  The microgravity and radiation environment on the ISS place those off limits.

first of all, that isn’t true on Mars either given typical times that people spend outside (just 7%).

Even when we are indoors, our species does not live a subterranean lifestyle.

Radiation just isn’t that bad on Mars.

Tell that to the researchers in the UNLV article above.

SECONDLY, solar radiation in the form of UV would definitely impact lifespan if I was unprotected in many areas of the Earth.

This is silly.  Solar UV is nothing like galactic cosmic radiation.  Solar UV is photons that penetrate the epidermis.  Galactic cosmic radiation is protons, alpha particles, and heavier ions accelerated to velocities that can penetrate any human tissue and even cell nuclei.  The former has an eV of 3 to 30 while the latter has an eV of 10^9 to 10^21.  We’re talking about a ~10 to ~20 order of magnitude difference in energy levels.  To a cell, it’s the difference between getting hit by a piece of dust and a Mack truck.

This has not been established for Mars level gravity!!! Quit exaggerating to the point of straight up lying!

I stated that we need to cross off the research boxes with centrifuges and/or lunar/Martian surface experiments.  But from both a statistical perspective and the fact that our biology is adapted to 1g after billions of years of evolution, it’s also unlikely that these defects miraculously drop out at 0.16g or 0.38g.

LOL wrong... Absolutely false. Even on ISS, which is a much worse environment than a typical Mars base would be, astronauts live for a year without life threatening problems.

We’re not talking about a year or two or three in these environments.  We’re talking about decades and lifespans in these environments.

it helps to not exaggerate or straight up lie about the state of the research!

Where is this research you keep referring to that shows it’s safe for humans to live for decades and bear children in low-g/high cosmic radiation environments?  Link, reference, anything?

Absolutely wrong. Modern humans with all advantages of science and technology are far better prepared than humans who settled the oceans, the deserts, the high altitude regions, the polar regions of the Earth.

Again, the Moon and Mars are quantitatively, qualitatively, and fundamentally much more dangerous to Earth biology and human health than any of those terrestrial environments.  And despite our modern advantages, there is no artificial gravity or Star Trek shield technology that could protect us from their dangers.

[VSECOTSPE]

Those studies are about zero-g, not partial G.

First, it’s microgravity, not zero-g. 

Second, although we need to check the box, there’s no reason to believe that the statistical distribution of these defects over different gravity fields suddenly drops off before 0.16g or 0.38g.  That would be an extremely fortuitous and strange distribution.  I would not bet on it.

Third, although again we need to check the box, we evolved over billions of years in a 1g environment that is far from 0.16g or 0.38g.  The discussion would be different if we evolved on a 0.2g or 0.4g planet.  But we didn’t.

I am not sure if this make senses but someone on Reddit was suggesting that a gravity vest to make the person heavier might help mitigate some of the gravity problems (e.g., bone loss). That's obviously speculation but it's interesting speculation!

I’m not talking about bone loss or other low-g health impacts to adults.  I’m talking about the loss of developmental signaling for foeti and juveniles in a low-g environments.  So is that large research volume above.  Treadmills and weights can’t help with that.

[VSECOTSPE]

Yup. I don’t know anyone who advocates for settling in pure microgravity. It’s effectively a strawman argument.

One which was not made here.  I specifically referred to Vast and their spinning space station above.

Where did I make that claim?? It is you who lie!

I’m talking about the dangers of living out decades and having children in the low-g/high cosmic radiation environments at the Moon and Mars.  You claim those dangers are false by pointing to astronauts who have spent only a year on a space station and never had children there.  That’s a misleading and false claim.  It’s a lie.

It’s like claiming you can’t live in Minnesota because raising a family without clothes or shelter in a frozen wasteland is instant death. Humans CREATE safe environments & technology to enable safe living in harsh environments.

Yeah, you can build fire and a log cabin to protect against the winter cold in the upper Midwest.  What do you build to protect foeti and juveniles from a low-g environment?  A spinning space station?  Well, why not just live there?   What do you build to protect against never-ending, very high-energy, galactic cosmic radiation from the sky?  A subterranean existence that our species has never chosen before?

Maybe YOU lived in a climate like Southern California where there is balmy weather year round and nature isn’t usually trying to kill you, but I was born into the bitter cold where weeks would pass without the temperature getting above 0F, where everything outside was frozen and dead (and you would die within a couple minutes, too, without technology), where your eyes would be blinded from the snow without countermeasures, where the very air would freeze your lungs if not protected by appropriate garment technology.

I’m from Iowa originally.  I could put on a coat and start a fire to deal with its winters.  There’s nothing I can put on or huddle around to protect from galactic cosmic radiation or a low gravity field.

The breadth of human experience is so much greater than the comfortable environments we know of today in modern air conditioned cities. Our ancestors would laugh (and then cry) at how soft we have become living in comfort, how feeble in our great wealth, and how cowardly in our ambitions.

Maybe.  Or maybe our ancestors only settled new lands by accident or when they had no other choice.  The harsh reality is that most (all?) human exploration and settlement has been historically driven by accident, necessity, greed, or fear.  Out of Africa was driven by climate change (necessity).  Native Americans were originally Siberians following food sources (accident).  Polynesians were dealing with sociopolitical change in limited geographies (necessity’s).  Icelandic, Greenland, and Newfoundland Norse escaped political persecution in Norway (fear).  The Viking Rus rowed and portaged from the Baltic to the Black Sea to trade with Constantinople and Baghdad (greed).  Marco Polo, Columbus, and all the rest were just seeking cheaper routes to riches in the East (greed).  The conquistadors were seeking Native American gold (greed).  Pilgrims, Puritans, and all the rest were escaping religious persecution in Europe (fear).  The first European Australians were convicts sent there as punishment (necessities).  The American West was opened by people desperate to escape poverty in Eastern cities and Europe (necessity) or seeking California gold (greed).  Apollo was about beating the Soviets in space during the Cold War after Sputnik and Gagarin (fear).  And on and on.  Myths about the indomitable human spirit and insatiable human curiosity are nice, but exploration and settlement has never been about either.

[VSECOTSPE]

The radiation level isn’t very high on Mars proper.

The annual radiation dose at Mars (~270 mSv) is literally an order of magnitude higher than the annual safe dose for radiation workers on Earth (20 mSv), who already take higher radiation risks than the rest of the population.  A radiation worker on Earth, if exposed to the radiation environment at Mars, would have to stop working after ~27 Earth days.  If we applied the same radiation safety standards to Mars settlers as we do to radiation workers on Earth, the Mars settlers would have to leave Mars (or go deep underground) after ~27 Earth days.

Plus the whole base area could be shielded additionally with an electromagnet shield.

There were papers on these concepts in 2006, 2011, and 2012.  They didn’t go anywhere.  The concepts are impractical and/or don’t work as advertised.

There are zero technical showstoppers here, and I’ve done the calculations needed for low levels

Let’s see these calculations.

[yg1968]

What do you build to protect foeti and juveniles from a low-g environment?  A spinning space station?  Well, why not just live there?   What do you build to protect against never-ending, very high-energy, galactic cosmic radiation from the sky?  A subterranean existence that our species has never chosen before?

To the extent that partial G is indeed an issue, it would be interesting if families with young children lived in artificial gravity space stations around Mars but people without a young family lived on Mars. I think that, given the choice, most people would prefer living on a planet.

[VSECOTSPE]

Just maybe Homo Sapiens Sapiens is meant to evolve into Homo Sapiens Astra?

New human species may be required to actually settle (live out lives and have children) in these environments.  But they won’t arise naturally.  A species evolves into a new one with gradual, continuous change.  Throwing Homo sapiens sapiens into these environments will just kill us.  The change is too abrupt and discontinuous.  It’s akin to throwing the dinosaurs into the terrestrial environments that existed after the Chicxulub asteroid.  They didn’t have time to adapt to so much radical change and died off.

Homo sapiens astra would require a radical re-engineering of the human genome, and that requires deep knowledge and an ethical framework which we won’t have for a long time to come, if ever.

The argument that we know it will fail so we should not even try is self-fulfilling and thus invalid.

The difference is being drawn between going to these environments for a few years of research, work, or adventure and living in these environments for decades and bearing and raising children in them.  No one is arguing don’t go at all.

[DreamyPickle]

Second, although we need to check the box, there’s no reason to believe that the statistical distribution of these defects over different gravity fields suddenly drops off before 0.16g or 0.38g.  That would be an extremely fortuitous and strange distribution.  I would not bet on it.

Completely disagree - it seems much more logical that negative effects come from a lack of any consistent "down" direction rather than simply "lower G". It's very possible that negative effects drop off exponentially when even a little gravity is introduced.

And this is the kind of difficult question that is best answered on the surface of the moon. A spinning station could do much better research but is not seriously being considered.

As for radiation - there's no reason you can't just live underground or pour unlimited regolith on top of your habitat. Again - if this is an issue then a lunar surface base can provide data.

[VSECOTSPE]

To the extent that partial G is indeed an issue, it would be interesting if families with young children lived in artificial gravity space stations around Mars but people without a young family lived on Mars. I think that, given the choice, most people would prefer living on a planet.

Given what we know now, I suspect generational living in space will require large, heavily shielded, rotating stations of some flavor and that trips to planetary surfaces will be temporary visits.  Big aerostats at certain altitudes in the Venusian atmosphere might also be an option for generational living.  There may be other overlooked locales in the solar system (atmospheres of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune?) that deliver close to 1g and some protection from galactic cosmic rays, but I can’t confirm offhand.

[VSECOTSPE]

Completely disagree - it seems much more logical that negative effects come from a lack of any consistent "down" direction rather than simply "lower G". It's very possible that negative effects drop off exponentially when even a little gravity is introduced.

No doubt, we need to run the centrifuge/lunar surface/Martian surface experiments to find out.

But we and every other living thing on Earth are uniquely adapted over billions of years of evolution to make the most out of a 1g environment, not an any-g environment.  Just because there’s some gravity pulling on a developing Earth organism doesn’t mean that gravitational field is strong enough to start key signaling processes during development and/or finish them in timely manner relative to other developmental processes.

Mammalian foetal development is an orchestra of processes, and a consistent 1g signal is one of several tempos that keeps the orchestra organized and producing music (or a viable mammal).  Change the 1g signal to a different tempo and you get noise (or a non-viable mammal).

And this is the kind of difficult question that is best answered on the surface of the moon. A spinning station could do much better research but is not seriously being considered.

It’s an example of the kind of thing the US human space flight program should have been doing a long time ago and sadly still doesn’t have much in the way of a program plan to address.

As for radiation - there's no reason you can't just live underground or pour unlimited regolith on top of your habitat.

Except our species does not live underground for decades and lifetimes.  I don’t think there will be many volunteers for such an existence, and the mental state of those that do volunteer is probably suspect.

[mike robel]

Moderators

Perhaps "Challenges and Hazards to Planetary Colonization" needs to be decoupled from "NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 3"

[whitelancer64]

One of the problems someone talked about was human survival in low G and radiation environments.  Well, no studies have been done at 0.4 G to see if low gravity, but some gravity would have on human or animal survival. 
*snip*

If humans can live and sustain life on Mars, then Ceres and the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn are not out of the question. 

*snip*

Actually, there are no published studies of the effects of Mars g on animals.

Japan has a small centrifuge on the ISS that has rodent habitat space in it. Over the past several years, JAXA has performed several series of studies of mice at Mars g. As far as I know, nothing has been published yet regarding any findings.

It's a reasonable guess that partial g will mitigate at least some of the worst effects of microgravity. We have no idea what the threshold for good long term health might be, though.  It could just as well be 0.75 g or 0.5 g as 0.37 g. Or 0.37g might be OK, but anything less than 0.25 g is insufficient. The only way to really find out the answer to that question is to build a rotating space station and do a whole bunch of studies at a wide range of g levels. 

[whitelancer64]

What do you build to protect foeti and juveniles from a low-g environment?  A spinning space station?  Well, why not just live there?   What do you build to protect against never-ending, very high-energy, galactic cosmic radiation from the sky?  A subterranean existence that our species has never chosen before?

To the extent that partial G is indeed an issue, it would be interesting if families with young children lived in artificial gravity space stations around Mars but people without a young family lived on Mars. I think that, given the choice, most people would prefer living on a planet.

That might depend on the size of the space station.

A 100 km diameter rotating space station would be well within the limitations of current materials technology.

[yg1968]

One of the problems someone talked about was human survival in low G and radiation environments.  Well, no studies have been done at 0.4 G to see if low gravity, but some gravity would have on human or animal survival. 
*snip*

If humans can live and sustain life on Mars, then Ceres and the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn are not out of the question. 

*snip*

Actually, there are no published studies of the effects of Mars g on animals.

Japan has a small centrifuge on the ISS that has rodent habitat space in it. Over the past several years, JAXA has performed several series of studies of mice at Mars g. As far as I know, nothing has been published yet regarding any findings.

It's a reasonable guess that partial g will mitigate at least some of the worst effects of microgravity. We have no idea what the threshold for good long term health might be, though.  It could just as well be 0.75 g or 0.5 g as 0.37 g. Or 0.37g might be OK, but anything less than 0.25 g is insufficient. The only way to really find out the answer to that question is to build a rotating space station and do a whole bunch of studies at a wide range of g levels.

From what I have read, the mice at an artificial gravity of 1G were in good health (similar to the controlled mice group on the ground). At the very least, it's encouraging from a proof of concept point of view.

[Robotbeat]

I can’t compete with VSECOTSPE‘s volume of text and replies just from my phone LOL. Gonna need a real keyboard to counter that level of concern troll and misinformation.

Suffice it to say, but the average American only spends 7% of time outside. 50mSv is the actual annual limit for radiation workers in the US (smaller values recommended, but not necessarily enforced), so spending the normal time completely outside would keep you well within radiation worker limits. Concern-trolling about having to spend “all time underground” or whatever is just that: concern-trolling. It’s not obvious to me that underground is the best way to shield anyway. You can shield entire cities via superconducting cables as well as using roof water shielding. I mentioned this before, but he keeps snipping out details like that and ignoring them.

Tons of additional things I could say, but he keeps repeating incorrect facts with posts and replies lasting several pages long. Can’t compete until the kids go to bed and I can access a real keyboard.

[Robotbeat]

Radiation worker limits are also themselves conservative. They measure just like a couple percent increase in fatal cancer risk. We’re talking smaller than the difference between being a smoker or non-smoker.

[mike robel]

It looks to me like food is not grown on the ISS for routine consumption although it has been grown since 2002 for study and limited tasting.  It would seem to me to be a rather important component for determining how to grow and sustain food on long duration spacecraft, moon, and Mars.  I don't believe any of the grown crops rely on polination by insects or the crop is small enough for humans to do.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/10-074.html

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=23624.0

https://www.digitaltrends.com/space/iss-fresh-food-psychology/

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1198385/NASA-news-ISS-latest-astronauts-harvest-food-grown-in-space-Space-Station-colonies

https://observer.com/2020/12/food-grown-in-space-international-space-station/