Pat Flannery wrote:


Borked Pseudo Mailed wrote:
The evolution of species on Earth has depended on gravity for
billions of years. Why are we so ignorant to think that we can solve
the adverse effects of weightlessness within a couple of decades? Why
aren't we more pragmatic?

Weight.
Building something that spins and generates 1 g like in 2001 means its
going to have to be huge, as studies have shown that unless it's around
400' in diameter the crew are going to get sick as they move around
inside of it from having "up" constantly changing between their head and
feet as they move from point to point on its periphery.
This is going to cause dizziness and nausea.
The centrifuge aboard the Discovery was only generating 1/6 g and even
then it was way too small to prevent the astronauts from getting sick:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/gaffe.html


Exactly. That is why human space travel will have to wait
until we can build huge spaceships.

To just go to Mars, with a 2-3 year stay in space, we would need
a huge, rotating, ship, shielded from space radiation by several
meters of water. This will not be feasible with current technology.

We will need a radically new way of accessing space before such ships
become possible.

With the *current* knowledge we have, automatic robotic exploring is the
only way to go.


--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32