Packing for Mars
Space is devoid of the stuff humans need to live: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh veg, privacy, beer. How much can a person give up? What happens when you can't walk for a year? Is sex any fun in zero gravity? As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to explore space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a 17,000-mile-per-hour crash test of NASA's space capsule, she takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of living in space.
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- When I was young becoming an astronaut would have been a dream. In recent years, after discovering the world of online learning, I learned too much though to have any desire to go into space, not with current or even soon-to-be technology. Physiological stress and radiation are very big problems. You must be young and thinking about health never entered your mind to apply for the job (yes of course, risk assessment vs. benefits is highly subjective, here, I'll even help you, see below).
Anyway, if you are interested start here (free courses):
- The Conquest of Space: Space Exploration and Rocket Science: https://www.edx.org/course/conquest-space-space-exploration-...
- Space Mission Design and Operations Learn the concepts: https://www.edx.org/course/space-mission-design-operations-e...
- Human Spaceflight - An introduction: https://www.edx.org/course/human-spaceflight-introduction-kt...
- Introduction to Aerospace Engineering: Astronautics and Human Spaceflight: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-aerospace-engineerin...
and maybe even (the more "heavy-weight" and more theory-heavy course)
- Introduction to Solar Systems Astronomy: https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-solar-systems-astron...
- Talking about a journey to Mars, you just must read "Packing for Mars" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packing_for_Mars), Google Talk presentation by the author (40 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0kaycVtvhU
.
PS: For a first flight experience I recommend you look up and contact a flight school at a small airport near you. An introductory 1 hour lesson without any prior requirements can easily be booked, and it is "self-contained", meaning you don't need to feel you are taking advantage if you don't become a student, they get paid for that hour. But even getting your private pilot license is not all that hard. I got mine years ago :)
For those of you in the Bay Area: http://www.wvfc.org/membership/introductory-flight (not the only address there, but the one where I went) As you can see it starts at $99 and is common enough to be made available in "packaged" form.
- Mary Roach had a bit in her book Packing for Mars about the huge impact fresh food has on astronaut morale. She also included a great anecdote about how some early Russian cosmonauts ended up eating some onion bulbs that were meant for a zero-gravity plant growth experiment:
The diary of cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev includes a story about a batch of onion bulbs taken on board Salyut as part of an investigation of plant growth in zero gravity. “As we were unloading the resupply ship, we found some rye-bread and a knife. So we ate some bread. Then we saw the onion bulbs we were supposed to plant. We ate them right then and there, with bread and salt. They were delicious. Time went by and the biologists asked us, ‘How are the onions?’ “‘They are growing,’ we answered…. “‘Do they have shoots?’ Without any hesitation we replied that they even had shoots. There was great excitement at the communication station. Onions have never bloomed in space before! We asked to speak to the head biologist in private. ‘For god’s sake,’ we told him, ‘don’t get upset, we ate your onions.’”
- Humans can withstand much more than 2.4Gs although the time is exponentially and inversely proportional (for example, 3Gs is a space shuttle launch for a number of minutes, 10Gs is the maximum force allowed during space capsule landing, but only for a few seconds).
Therefore, I wouldn't say "uninhabitable," but probably less friendly (and not immediately lethal) to humans. Also, different animals have different thresholds -- mice, for example, have a much lower tolerance for G-forces than whales.
I recommend reading "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach -- very insightful book that discusses all sorts of things about planet habitability, space travel, space suit design, psychology, and among many other things, G-forces.
- In Mary Roach's book "Packing for Mars" [0], in the section where they talk about the psychological impact of going into space, there is an interesting anecdote about the history of trains. As trains began to become more commonplace, there were concerns in England that the speed at which trains traveled would cause passengers to panic given that humans had never experienced both the speed and the motion parallax.
This of course, all turned out be for nought and was best summarized by a Russian cosmonaut in the book "This is problem only concern for psychologists".
