I think artificial gravity is cool, but for Mars it might not be necessary.You would not need artificial gravity if the flight to mars was short enough. I would rather spend the weight (and monetary) budget on more fuel or a better engine that shortens the trip time.
For missions beyond mars or for orbital stations, it is a different matter, though. Also, if I may suggest, you could rotate the habitats at the end of the trusses by 90 degrees (using the truss as a rotation axis) and give the inhabitants and longer straight floor. Unless you just rotate the entire spacecraft, you might want to consider counter rotating something (more habitats?) in the other direction?
I think artificial gravity is cool, but for Mars it might not be necessary.You would not need artificial gravity if the flight to mars was short enough. I would rather spend the weight (and monetary) budget on more fuel or a better engine that shortens the trip time. For missions beyond mars or for orbital stations, it is a different matter, though. Also, if I may suggest, you could rotate the habitats at the end of the trusses by 90 degrees (using the truss as a rotation axis) and give the inhabitants and longer straight floor. Unless you just rotate the entire spacecraft, you might want to consider counter rotating something (more habitats?) in the other direction?
I am of course talking about Mars missions with transit times much shorter than 100 days. There are several concepts, using advanced propulsion systems with trip times as short as 30 days. Once your trip times get significantly over 30 days, everything starts to get much more complicated and the lack of gravity is only one of those problems. This is why I am saying that it would be a good idea to further investigate those propulsion concepts and invest money and launch weight into those, rather than artificial gravity. This is just my personal opinion of course and I understand that some people might think differently.
Whilst those propulsion systems may be some years/decades away, artificial gravity would still be required for longer trips to the outer planets. So both will be needed I suspect.
I think NASA should build a rodent habitat with some male and female mice for the ISS that rotates and can simulate Mars gravity. Maybe put it inside the BEAM if they are short on space. That would be to verify that mammals can reproduce successfully in Mars gravity. They may start with lower animals such as insects or worms first.
Quote from: Jcc on 05/15/2016 03:02 amI think NASA should build a rodent habitat with some male and female mice for the ISS that rotates and can simulate Mars gravity. Maybe put it inside the BEAM if they are short on space. That would be to verify that mammals can reproduce successfully in Mars gravity. They may start with lower animals such as insects or worms first.I think NASA does not want that as it might interfere with microgravity experiments. They would have to shift the entire focus of what is done on the ISS.I have been thinking for a while they may do that on MCT. I imagine they will want to verify the ECLSS of MCT with a crew in orbit for at least 6-8 months. Time enough to do such an experiment. If they are generous they may do the experiment with moon gravity in parallel, the same centrifuge but nearer to the center. The experiment could run long enough that space born mice can reproduce.
Quote from: Elmar Moelzer on 05/01/2016 03:43 amI think artificial gravity is cool, but for Mars it might not be necessary.You would not need artificial gravity if the flight to mars was short enough. I would rather spend the weight (and monetary) budget on more fuel or a better engine that shortens the trip time.The availability of fuel for refueling spaceships in space means that over time we can go faster and faster to our destinations, so while artificial gravity would be nice, passengers may be able to make a multi-month trip in 0G without too much physical degradation. But we will need to ship enough people to Mars so that we can understand what the actual effects are.QuoteFor missions beyond mars or for orbital stations, it is a different matter, though. Also, if I may suggest, you could rotate the habitats at the end of the trusses by 90 degrees (using the truss as a rotation axis) and give the inhabitants and longer straight floor. Unless you just rotate the entire spacecraft, you might want to consider counter rotating something (more habitats?) in the other direction?Artificial gravity through the use of rotating structures will require more much more mass than we'll be able to push between Mars and Earth in the early years. That's because mass requires fuel, and fuel requires rockets from Earth (at least for the trip from Earth to Mars). It's going to be a while until fuel is that cheap that we can build large spaceships with rotating gravity.But when that time comes I have some ideas...
Quote from: JamesH65 on 05/10/2016 06:15 amWhilst those propulsion systems may be some years/decades away, artificial gravity would still be required for longer trips to the outer planets. So both will be needed I suspect.The video is about a trip to Mars. I think for that particular application, trips can be shortened enough to remove the need for artificial gravity. Now for longer trips, this is a different matter all together.
Of course, if all of NASA's budget is simply meant to spent on propulsion and capsules, and ignoring the Grand Challenges of the past decades, then by all means continue to spend the next decade spending all the cash on multiple engine, capsule, and LV development efforts.
SpaceX could do it on an automated DragonLab if NASA or other ISS partners are not interested. NASA does want to go to Mars, so it is relevant, and it could be very interesting basic science. They can call it SpaceSex, that should grab people's attention.
Quote from: muomega0 on 05/15/2016 01:24 pmOf course, if all of NASA's budget is simply meant to spent on propulsion and capsules, and ignoring the Grand Challenges of the past decades, then by all means continue to spend the next decade spending all the cash on multiple engine, capsule, and LV development efforts.Better to have the means to get there and current gen life support, than no means to get there and a significantly better life support.We have the resources to keep people alive on mars now. The focus (and it's a vital one) is mitigating health risks and making everything cheaper, more sustainable and easier to expand using primarily martian resources - but one fiscal challenge at a time. You don't start fireproofing a building if the basic structure is impossible.Probably more important than artificial gravity on mars is getting general healthcare fixed. How do I grow basic tissues on a martian environment? If someone gets cancer can we treat that without having to send them back to Earth? Somebody has inhaled martian dust? How do we look after their lungs?
I like to point out that a third of the people who went to the moon on moon landing missions stayed in orbit. The same makes sense for a Mars mission
Quote from: Lee Jay on 05/15/2016 02:10 pmI like to point out that a third of the people who went to the moon on moon landing missions stayed in orbit. The same makes sense for a Mars missionWith modern automated docking maneuvers, is it really necessary to keep somebody on orbit? I was under the impression that NASA had been planning on this when they were considering new manned lunar missions as part of Constellation before it was cancelled. If separate command and decent modules are used, why not have the orbiting command module run by computer?