Russian Mars Mission Dry Run -- No Women Allowed

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 22:40:55 -0500, in a place far, far away, rk
: made the phosphor on my monitor
: glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: Rand Simberg wrote:
:
: On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 23:44:56 +0200, in a place far, far away, Jochem
: Huhmann made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
: way as to indicate that:
:
: Have you upgraded to a flat screen yet? Or gonna stick with the CRT forever?

: Well, probably not forever, but for now.

Hey, all you need for USENET is a VT-100 terminal or the equivalent.

Eric

(EAC) wrote in message om...
Jochem Huhmann wrote in message ...
Honestly, I think the solution would be to choose the right women
for that -- not to exclude women from it.

Ahem... If it's that easy, then right now submarine crew already
included women. And the reason on why submarine crew didn't include
women are all the same reasons on why many proposal for a manned crew
mission to Mars didn't include women. The tension is already quite
tense, to add women into the mixture would be just like adding more
fuel to the fire.
OTOH, this completely ignores the number of mixed gender long duration
spaceflights which have been completed without significant problems of
this kind reported (One can of course question whether there were
problems that simply were not reported. JimO ?)

mixed gender long duration missions ( from
http://www.astronautix.com )
Kondakova / Viktorenko / Polyakov 169 days Mir
Lucid / Onufriyenko / Usachev 188 days Mir
(comment from Lucid on this topic
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/history/h-f-lucid-women.htm
)
Helms / Usachev / Voss: 167 days ISS EO-2
Whitson / Korzun / Treshchev: : 184 days, ISS EO-5

It appears Usachev has by far the most flight time with mixed crews.

(note, I'm slightly uncertain about the composition of the Mir crews,
since visiting Soyuz crews stayed longer, and some people were rotated
on Soyuz while others were on the shuttle. Flight durations aren't
exact, since some include freeflight time in other spacecraft.)

Those are not mars mission length, but I would suggest that 6 months
without serious problems is a fair indication that you can do it
indefinitely.

My personal guess is that there weren't significant problems on most
of those flights, because unlike the simulated missions, the
participants were required to train together under fairly stressful
conditions for a significant time in advance. If they had shown
themselves unable to have healthy interpersonal relations, they would
not have been flown together. This should be true regardless of
gender. I would also guess that that standard of discipline of the
people who actually fly might be a bit higher than the ground test
volunteers.

This IMO shows a flaw in the simulation, if the standards for
simulation participants are lower than those of the people who fly,
and they are not given the same chance, prior to the 'mission' to
demonstrate their compatibility, or lack of it.

Jim Oberg wrote:
Recent news item about Russian plans to
put a 'crew' inside a spaceship simulator
for 500 days of isolation, to simulate a
mission to Mars and back -- but no women
will be allowed.

I would suspect reversing the balance--
i.e. more women than men on board-- would
probably improve the dynamics. Of course,
maintaining contraception would be rather
entertaining because we haven't done any
research on IUDs or hormonal contraceptive
in a microgravity environment.

(Condoms are right out because they'd be
consumables...)

Perhaps that's one thing that should be
tested... first, document any changes to
the mentrual and ovulation cycle over some
months in microgravity and then send a couple
into orbit for a week or so, centered on her
"time of ovulation" so they can couple (with
full documentation for those of us with
prurient interests) and find out whether it
makes a big difference to fertility. (Yeah,
yeah, you'd need a couple of months in space
to find out...)

So we need to know:

1) How does microgravity affect fertility?

which should provide a baseline for:

2) How do various contraceptives function
in a microgravity environment?

I'm _pretty_ sure that any female astronauts
would _not_ willingly submit to sterilization
any more than all the males having a vasectomy.

If we had cheap enough spacelift I'm sure that
there will be those who'd undertake these studies
"just for fun". Granted, people pursuing that
kind of joy-ride would likely be referred to as
"astronaughties".

Why does mankind explore? Because we're trying to
find places to make whoopee where we won't be
interrupted by our children... or our in-laws/parents.

--
John R. Campbell Speaker to Machines GNUrd
"Grace is sufficient so Joy was let go." - Heather L. Campbell
"Faith manages ... even though she didn't get promoted" - me
Why OS X? Because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows

"hop" wrote in message
om...
(EAC) wrote in message
om...

Those are not mars mission length, but I would suggest that 6 months
without serious problems is a fair indication that you can do it
indefinitely.

that's all well and good, but there's a hell of a difference between a
6-month mission where you can have realtime chats with your SO a couple
times a week, and a Mars mission that's *five or six times longer*, for most
of which the time lag makes actual conversation with Earth impossible.

AFAIK the only remotely close simulation of that here on Earth was the
Biosphere projects, which IIRC had some very dicey interpersonal clashes.
You could also throw in wartime deployments to godforsaken places where
there's no nightlife to blow off steam after combat.

--
Terrell Miller


" A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster

Terrell Miller wrote:
AFAIK the only remotely close simulation of that here on Earth was the
Biosphere projects, which IIRC had some very dicey interpersonal clashes.

And this is very important research. But as I recall, part of the problem with
the Biosphere projects was that the facility was not capable of sustaining
life for that many people and/or there weren't enough people to maintain it
properly. So that became a real strain on the people.

On a long duration trip, the crew will have to be very comfortable and not
have to worry about rationing water, air or food. (albeit with no abusive use).

While a mars mission may not allow live conversations, technology such as
"video mail" and just normal email or even newsgroups would give the crew good
opportunities for communications (provided they can use those without having
to constantly ask ground for permission to make calls).

"Terrell Miller" wrote in message ...

snip

that's all well and good, but there's a hell of a difference between a
6-month mission where you can have realtime chats with your SO a couple
times a week, and a Mars mission that's *five or six times longer*, for most
of which the time lag makes actual conversation with Earth impossible.

AFAIK the only remotely close simulation of that here on Earth was the
Biosphere projects, which IIRC had some very dicey interpersonal clashes.
You could also throw in wartime deployments to godforsaken places where
there's no nightlife to blow off steam after combat.

You might be interested in
http://advlifesupport.jsc.nasa.gov/ehti3/index.html which was a 90 day
test at JSC with 2 men and 2 women locked away, testing out life
support technologies. This test made full use of personal video
conferencing, although the time lag for a mars mission was not
simulated.

-Cache!

"Terrell Miller" wrote:
AFAIK the only remotely close simulation of that here on Earth was the
Biosphere projects, which IIRC had some very dicey interpersonal clashes.

Which may have been exacerbated by the increasingly troublesome living
conditions inside the Biosphere.

Off the top of my head I can't think of much to learned from Biosphere
other than how not to do things.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

John Doe wrote:

Terrell Miller wrote:
AFAIK the only remotely close simulation of that here on Earth was the
Biosphere projects, which IIRC had some very dicey interpersonal clashes.

And this is very important research. But as I recall, part of the problem with
the Biosphere projects was that the facility was not capable of sustaining
life for that many people and/or there weren't enough people to maintain it
properly. So that became a real strain on the people.

It was designed to sustain it's crew with a (to them) reasonable
amount of work. In reality, as the 'biosystem' began to diverge from
predictions (themselves made from whole cloth) the required working
hours trended up, and the amount of food created per working hour
trended sharply down.

If we map Biosphere onto space exploration, we find Shepard, Grisson,
and Glenn flying the first Lunar expedition... On April 10th 1959.
(Their selections were announced April 9th.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Derek Lyons wrote:
Off the top of my head I can't think of much to learned from Biosphere
other than how not to do things.

That is often the most important lesson to be learned.


-george william herbert

On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 01:47:44 +0000, Joann Evans wrote:
rk wrote:
The phrase will likely go on, anyway. After all, we speak of Internet
access via normal telephone lines as 'dial-up.' But when was the last
time any of us used a phone with a real 'dial?' ...

Having carried it through two moves, I still have an original dial
'phone (pre-Bell breakup) in my kitchen, although it has been some
months since I actually *dialed* a number.

And never mind that neither dial nor buttons are on a modem, anyway.

Well, if you're going to get all technical ...

-paul-
--
Paul E. Black )