Jon Phillips: It’s rare to see a piece on crewed space exploration that actually acknowledges the biggest obstacle standing in the way: astronauts’ radiation exposure (and to a lesser extent, the medical effects of microgravity)

It’s rare to see a piece on crewed space exploration that actually acknowledges the biggest obstacle standing in the way: astronauts’ radiation exposure (and to a lesser extent, the medical effects of microgravity)

What if we're stuck down here? defector.com/what-if-were...

What If We're Stuck Down Here? | Defectordefector.com If I’m to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It’s romantic. It’s adventurous. It’s cool! It’s also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve t...

Space medicine is an entire field that actually exists! And yet as far as most discussions of crewed space travel go, it may as well not.

(And yes, like most aspects of our space program, the field of space medicine in the US was founded by a Nazi who was brought here after the war and never faced consequences for the atrocities he was party to: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubertu...)

Hubertus Strughold - Wikipediaen.m.wikipedia.org

Thank you for this inclusion.

It’s important context!

Agreed and yet…*stares at heritage institutions across the USA that obscure, ignore, or minimize said situation amongst others*

I'm dreaming of a world in which John Stapp starts a series of increasingly awful dares for science with Hubertus Strughold. Maybe with Harry Turtledove writing.

The upside is that microgravity effects are technologically mitigatable with some engineering effort. Radiation is partly why we send older astronauts though right? One upside of eventual scientific / commercial settlements on Moon / Mars(?) is we'll get data on partial gravity effects.

Radiation is solvable to some degree with more shielding (which means more mass and considerably more cost to launch it), and that also requires no more space walks and doing everything in the vacuum with robots

Local teleoperation of “robots” should be profoundly easier in the 2020s and 2030s than it would have been in the 60s or even the 80s.

speaking as a journalist who sometimes writes about space, it's because space journalism is HUGELY biased toward positive coverage to the point of ignoring problems. (That's why it took over a decade for publications to actually start giving any critical coverage to Musk.)

Oh absolutely, and it’s not even just the journalism. A few years back I was working on a space weather oral history project, and the scientists who actually work in the field had very few kind words for the NASA administrators pushing Artemis and other crewed missions.

for sure, and that's another big problem. Most of NASA's budget is human spaceflight. If criticism of how things are done gets out, NASA's budget would likely suffer, rather than being reallocated to other projects like robotic exploration.

I am, shall we say, not a fan of Bill Nelson

it would be interesting to see polling data - to what extent is public support for robotic space exploration based on an assumption that it's laying the groundwork for a future human presence?

The Fermi "paradox" has always irritated me because plausible answers have always been right in front of us. Somewhere across the galaxies are other forms of life that also have weak little physical bodies that can't handle an inside-out sunburn

Ultimately hypogravity is the bigger problem - can shield against radiation (within reason) but can't make useful gravity, only acceleration, and creating acceleration generates lots of engineering problems (and tough to do planet surfaces). Going faster to limit exposure helps (but not on planets)

In the long run, that may well be true, but at present we simply don’t have effective radiation shielding that isn’t prohibitively heavy, and the effects of radiation outside the earth’s magnetosphere are much more immediate and severe than those of microgravity

That's right, though we know what to do to reduce radiation exposure, so I think hypogravity (any G below 1) is the real showstopper - especially on other worlds. We don't have gravity generators. Even if you buried your Mars colony a km down you'd still have to confront the effects of 0.3 G. /1

2/ Of course, colonizing Venus could be the answer (if 0.8 G is adequate) 😉. Agree that the article to which you link is a breath of fresh air, BTW - most space writers ignore these realities. spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2020/08/venu...

Venus is the Best Place in the Solar System to Establish a Human Settlement (2003)spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com The story of spaceflight told through missions and programs that did not happen - that is, the great majority of them.

It’s always so dissapointing when I see actual space installation plans and the first thing to go is windows because of trying to reduce radiation and it sorta makes me wonder what would be the point of living on Mars if I never got to see the surface.

There's so many "boring" challenges to overcome before anything can actually happen and it's nice when someone's at least looking at them

Space, it's too damn big.

Glad the author pointed out the possibly insuperable health costs of long duration manned space travel, but almost gave up at the cringe worthy "the way to preserve the species in the event we ruin the Earth" part.

Well obviously you don't know anything because you don't have billions like Mr Musk, the greatest space engineer of all times.

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