Colonizing Mars is a bad idea.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Another article that can't even bother linking to the actual research
Astronauts have an unusually high rate of kidney stone formation, with 1-year post-flight astronauts experiencing incidence rates of 2β7 times that of pre-flight estimates, and in-flight risk estimated to be double that again5. This is of mission critical significance, one Soviet in-flight renal stone episode nearly caused a mission termination due to the severe symptoms, but was relieved by spontaneous stone passage by the cosmonaut just before an urgent deorbit was initiated
It has been demonstrated that spaceflight associated changes in urinary biochemistry favour kidney stone formation
the kidney is an exquisitely radiation sensitive organ; it is the dose limiting organ in abdominal radiotherapy
Our data robustly and orthogonally supports tubular remodelling occurring in microgravity with and without GCR (Galactic Cosmic Radiation). This is highly likely to have functional consequences, as tubular remodelling does in other scenarios39.
Renal remodelling in microgravity (possibly related to the cephalad fluid shift) may therefore be a primary event that causes subsequent dysregulation of serum and urine electrolyte homeostasis. This is supported by the prompt return to baseline of humans on return to terrestrial gravity.
Sounds like GCR is a big concern to Renal functionality due to it's sensitivity to radiation, but they don't think it's the main driver of astronauts subsequent renal dysfunction. Interesting stuff.
So what you really mean is βhuman exploration of space generally speaking in doubtβ
If the issue is gravity, we could go to Venus and spin space craft to get centrifugal force.
You'd need an unreasonably huge station to do that, probably with materials that don't exist.
What about Renderite(tm)?
Actually neither one of those statements is true.
The issue with spin-gravity is angular momentum. The smaller you want something to be, the faster it has to spin. The faster it spins, the harder it is for the people inside to adjust.
So to get 1g of gravity, they found that a good in between would be about 4g of angular momentum. Astronauts could get used to that relatively easily in a few days. And that could be achieved in a spinning structure with the diameter equal to roughly the length of a football field. If they find that human health could be unaffected by living in lower gravity, say .5g, than you can decrease that size by 50%.
It's large. But not unreasonably so by any stretch. It's about the size of the ISS. Especially when you consider that it doesn't have to be a complete circle. If you can imagine a truss extending out from a central point like an aircraft propeller with a habitat on one end and a counterweight on the other. As someone else already mentioned, it's no different than building a suspension bridge.
The tinsel strength required for a centrifuge ring is equal to the tensile strength required to build a suspension bridge of the same length. Obviously we do build suspension bridges all of the time so the materials already exist.
The problem is the size needed to not have a debilitating G-Force difference between the head and the feet.
Wait a minute, that's one of the worst kinds of shrinkage!
Send cockroaches.
Cockroaches deserve to have their kidneys shrunken.
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