View Single Post
  #13  
Old February 14th 05, 08:35 AM
John Doe
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

"Fred J. McCall" wrote:
That was not my understanding of what the space medicine studies
indicated. Women under zero-g lose calcium more quickly than men do,
as I recall it. Calcium loss is pretty much THE big problem we're
aware of with prolonged exposure to zero-g.



For a trip the duration of the Mars expedition, does it make a
difference ? Woudldn't they need to find way to deal with calcium loss
even for men ? And if they do find a way to stabilize calcium level on
men, wouldn't that also work for women with just different dosage of
whatever they do ?

And what about age ? Would younger crews have lesser problems with
calcium and in fact less problems with exercising sufficiently to
maintain good shape ?

I find it interesting that in that "failed" russian study, they enclosed
young adults whereas people of such age rarely get to go up to space.
Younger adults would make the sexual tension issue more prevalent (this
isn't taboo anymore, right ?), but their higher energy levels and better
bodies might make the trip far more surviveable.

Raising occupancy of the station should be made a very high priority in
order to allow crews of varying ages to work there. This would not only
allow proper experiemnts on age versus body depletion in 0g, but also
personal relationships between younger and older crewmembers, issues of
authority and of course the sexual issues and how to best deal with
them. None of this has been tested yet with crews on Mir and Alpha
having been too small.


As far as the argument of sending only "professionals", this is
ludicrous. You can't be "professional" 7/24 for over a year without any
break. Also remember that interactive communications with a spouse will
not be possible once far enough from earth, and that is something which
has not really been tested much so far. And it isn't just the person is
space one much consider, but also the spouse and possibly kids who won't
see their parent for such a long time.

And all this is contingent on a decision on how many cremembersw are to
be sent to Mars and back. It defines the size of the ship, the type of
crew and crew training necessary, and the crew selection (sex, marital
status, education etc). It also requires setting up a training schedule
to find out how soon prior to the trip you need to start the mission
specific training, and how much of it can be done during the trip. And
that also means skills based training.

Another issue is how much personal space is required for a mission of
that duration, and whether the amount of personal space varies with age
and/or sex. Would you need duplicate lounges/gyms in case the crew
splits into two groups that don't get together well during off-duty
times ?


This isn't Star Trek. You can't ignore toilets and sexual issues, and
you can't garantee that all crew members will get along wonderfully and
constantly sport smiles and never complain about workload or food for
1.5 years in closed quarters. There are issues and they need to be dealt with.