Pickens writes "Science Daily News reports that human missions to Mars and all other long-term space flights might be compromised by disease, first because space travel appears to weaken astronauts' immune systems; and second, because it increases the virulence and growth of microbes. 'When people think of space travel, often the vast distances are what come to mind first,' says Jean-Pol Frippiat from Nancy-University in France, 'but even after we figure out a way to cover these distances in a reasonable amount of time, we still need to figure out how astronauts are going to overcome disease and sickness.' Frippiat says studies show that immune systems of both people and animals in space flight conditions are significantly weaker than their grounded counterparts and that common pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli and Staphylococcus reproduce more rapidly in space flight conditions, leading to increased risk of contamination, colonization and serious infection."
WTF? How is a first post mentioning a "diversified ecosystem" redundant? Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does. It also tends to help keep pathogens numbers down, since even pathogens have predators/competitors in a diversified ecosystem.
The constant challenge to your immune system is xray and gamma radiation. Astronauts say spacewalk "smells" like a pine forest or sparks. Which is the smell of ozone/nitrous oxides. It's caused by radiation, it's like a locally generated ozone-layer, inside your spacesuit. Life, such as the human body, or especially Deinococcus Radiodurans bacteria, can still withstand quite a bit of radiation or oxidation damage and repair itself. The major source of radiation damage comes from potassium in the diet, from the potassium 40 isotope. Another similar damage is UV radiation damage, that still causes skin cancer here and there after all these millions of years of adaptation. The major source of oxidation damage that is very similar to radiation damage, comes from oxygen. Life cannot function without either potassium or oxygen, though you could clean up potassium 40 from your diet. But what's the point?
For any kind of successful very longterm space missions one needs heavy shielding at least equivalent to the atmosphere we have down here on earth. More radiation (even living at higher altitudes with less atmospheric shielding, or even near an ozone hole region) increases the rates of mutations miscarriages and cancers, but also the rate or adaptation to new environments. One of the dangers with non-well-shielded space travel is faster evolution than down here on Earth. But multilayer shielding can compensate for that, and keep mutation levels to lower than natural.
That brings up the question, that maybe lack of radiation is a cause of sicknesses, in a sense of not keeping the immune system well trained. People who live in a completely sterile bacteria free environment have very weak immune systems that lacks training. One still needs a flora to coexist inside the body if for nothing else, for composting intestinal contents. Those same bacteria can cause illnesses, if not kept under check by the immune systems constant vigilance. Still, as far as radiation goes, people coming from areas of high background radiation, such as India, don't seem to suffer much compared to people living in low background radiation areas. If anything, fluoride in their drinking water is the bigger problem for them, and background radiation is a relative nonissue. Perhaps a certain dose of background radiation is like a vitamin, increases health by keeping the immune system trained.
Still, as far as radiation goes, people coming from areas of high background radiation, such as India
India has a traditionally high population density. You need to find a better example that doesn't have enormous alternate factors for explaining disease resistance.
Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does.
Lots of sex.
Without condoms (and with swallowing). Regular exchange of bodily fluids also keeps your immune system ticking over. Regular sex might help morale as well.
Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does.
Lots of sex.
Without condoms (and with swallowing). Regular exchange of bodily fluids also keeps your immune system ticking over. Regular sex might help morale as well.
No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah......but no
because that may result in this [littlebritain.tv]! And that's no diversity what you see although it may be interesting to watch this move around Mars for a while and it cleans things up here a little.
Hmm, I was thinking those words were gonna be: selective breeding.
Until that works out, I suggest we focus on telescopes and probes, rovers, and those things that float in seas of frozen methane. Also as a way to reduce our carbon emissions by using lower weight vehicles.
1) low gravity enhances microbe growth. -- Eh, probably not enough in itself, since the microbial balance would probably still be roughly the same.
2) if the environment is made too sterile, it actually encourages pathogens, which are normally kept largely in check by other microbes. This is actually the root of the problem with hospitals and resistant infections today, to the point that some are considering returning to a less-sterile general environment. -- Easily solved; just don't sterilize the equipment in the first place. In short, maintain the diversified natural microbial population, to discourage overgrowth of pathogens.
Well, we had people on long term space missions on Mir and ISS that are comparable in time with a mars mission, without them being eaten alive by E. coli, Salmonella and whatnot. What was the problem again?
There isn't in a closed environment like a shuttle to Mars.
I don't think that that is really true or relevant. Even the long duration ISS expeditions typically had only 1 or 2 Progress spacecrafts dock with them during the mission. I would imagine that any deep space missions would have provisions kept in lockers or modules that would be opened in time (i.e., whatever perturbations are caused by a Progress supply mission would be similar to that caused by opening a previously closed supply module). BTW,
The ISS is a worse environment. Sure some things have been replaced regularly. But on the other hand, the ISS has been active for somewhere around 10 years now, far longer than any proposed Mars craft. Microbes have plenty of places to thrive for ten years. And we have prior MIR and Skylab experience as well. None of these indicate any microbe problem of this sort.
Quick wikipedia search results in:
The longest stay in space was 438 days, by Russian Valeri Polyakov onboard Mir.
Separate search for time (one way) earth to mars is in the range 6 - 9 months.
The trip would require O2 production and CO2 scrubbers or some equivalent. The scrubbers used in industry and on submarines are generally toxic to people (and presumably to microbes) or get really hot. Either way I think the idea of cleansing the air to reduce illness would be trivial. Bring plenty of hand sanitizer and I think it'll be under control.
That brings another problem : if you keep the environment completely pathogen free , the immunity of the people there will drop significantly , since it is not being stimulated. So , when they come home , they will immediately get sick.
Antibodies don't remain in the body forever. That's the one of the reasons that you need to vaccinate again after a few years.
And also , pathogens mutate , so your body will have to adapt to it , in order to fight it . Which it can't do in this case. Offcourse,that will only be a problem after years , not after a few months.
And it will certainly become a problem if the trip takes generations
Wouldn't it help to have them in a sterile environment for a prolonged period to make sure they are not taking any particularly nasty microbes on in the first place? Perhaps give them a few shots of antibiotics to be on the safe side? Or even give them some immune boosting drugs to take along. Oh and make sure they take a lot of brocolli with them and that they eat all their vegetables.
I'm not an immunologist, but the gist of your post echoes my thoughts. Provided the astronauts are properly isolated prior to a manned mission to Mars, I assume the risk of pathogen transmission would be greatly reduced. Sterilization of all food provisions carried for the mission would be assumed. I understand that we may not have good data on extended periods (read: multiple years) of lack of exposure to commonly encountered pathogens; perhaps the personnel involved would require an extended stay in a gradual re-acclimation environment following their return to Earth. To address concerns over illnesses encountered on the journey, I'd hope that highly trained medical personnel and provisions for proper treatment of a wide range of illnesses would be included in any approved mission protocol.
While getting rid of salmonella is good, you can't get rid of all disease causing bacteria. And if the environment you live in is too sterile, your body just becomes more susceptible to other infections and to auto-immune disease.
Injecting antibiotics is about the worst thing you can do because it really messes up your bacterial ecology. Bacteria are a natural part of your body, and if you start killing them with antibiotics, things go wrong. Antibiotics should really only be taken when there is a serious infection present.
In addition to artificial gravity (via rotation), the solution may be to challenge the body with other microbes that are known to be not too harmful, similar to "pro-biotic drinks".
Thats what I was thinking. Surely a small capsule with a handful of people surrounded by thousands of miles of near-vacuum is about as close to a clean-room environment as you can get.
Sterilize everything, let them spend a blissful year or two in splendid good health, then worry about their poor shattered immune systems when they get back.
Works in theory, but a rotating spacecraft would in practice be a horrible experience. To achieve enough "artificial gravity" the angular velocity needs to be pretty high (assuming that the diameter of the spacecraft is much smaller than the diameter of the earth), which in turn generates a lot of coriolis forces. These coriolis forces are not very pleasant. Ever been on a thrill ride in an amusement park? Imagine being stuck in such a rotating thing for more than a limited amount of time...
If the diameter of the circle of the rotation is large enough, the astronauts would not get motion sickness. Back in the 1970s, I read that a space station of about 1 mile in diameter, could be rotated at 1 G gravity without making the people inside seasick. Instead of making the spaceship that large, they could attach the living quarters to each end of a very long cable, and then slowly rotate the ship. In the center of the cable, they could place a zero-G section which would contain sensors, and possibly
Put a spinning deck inside the spacecraft. Then the astronuats can run around the rim to get exercise . Oh and put a manual switch for the pod bay door on the outside of the ship in case the computer runs amok.
Look into what Bigelow Aerospace is doing. If you spin an inflated structure fast enough to get 1 G of acceleration, it's the same as doing so with a rigid structure.
Look into what Bigelow Aerospace is doing. If you spin an inflated structure fast enough to get 1 G of acceleration, it's the same as doing so with a rigid structure.
So I am not the only one that wants to take something inflatable with me if I have to go to Mars? Excellent.
> Why do we care about sending our meatbag selves to other planets? I'd be more > productive if we could just send some strong AI to do it for us.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us shall go on to the stars".
You are more than welcome to stay right there in your mother's basement and watch. You'll be safe and warm. No need to go out into the big scary world at all.
You need somewhere to send yourself or life in general, to "diversify your portfolio", to not be "keeping all your eggs in one basket", in case of a catastrophy down here on Earth. In a sense you live for life, to protect life, and to maintain life. If survival of silicon/metal robotic AI machines is sufficient in your opinion as a form of survival of life, without survival of chemical machine humans, animals, plants, then you can just send your AI off to outer space. But the rest of us love nature, trees, animals and our meatbag selves, and would like to see our children, or whatever meatbag stuff evolves from them, and whatever stuff evolves from trees too, survive on forever. That's our job on this planet, so we can die calmly, making sure that others live on. You have a duty of self interest to make sure that you live on, but balanced by a duty of making sure that the whole lives on. What else is the purpose of life? To fuck, shoot, kill, enjoy yourself without paying attention to what and who you cut in the name of your self interest, and bring the whole world down with you when you get pissed because it's your time to go out and depart? You will never die in peace when you make yourself the center of your world. You have to take care of yourself as a taking part in taking care of the whole, but ultimately, you don't live forever. But life, and meat, in general, has a chance to.
It's hard to say what happens when metal/silicon gets smarter than meat. I am meat, and I care about meat, and green plants like trees too. I chop wood, but I want to see trees in general exist forever. In a sense trees are my very distant siblings, and we share a common eukaryote ancestor going back 2 billion years ago. I also care about non eukaryote life, with whom I share a common ancestor going back to 3 billion years ago. Metal/silicon machines and automation that I create can help me get less tired and get things done that I can't do myself, and that's a big deal, but I don't want to make it so good that I have to fight or compete against it, because I know I would lose. One has to be careful with developing super strong AI if one wants to survive. Can cooperation between metal/silicon and meat be guaranteed forever? What happens when a smarter predator than us appears? Will we be to them as chickens are to us? And more importantly, do they get judged the same way during last judgment day as we do and go to the same Inferno or Paradiso that we do for committing sins?
There have been ISS Expeditions that have lasted times comparable to at least one way to Mars - Expeditions 4, 6, 8 and 13 at least. There is no microbiological difference between orbiting the Earth and going to Mars, so I would conclude that people should be able to get to Mars just fine.
I still think that truly deep space exploration will require artificial gravity (i.e., spinning spacecraft), but this sounds like FUD to justify research funds to me.
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday October 31, @05:13AM (#29933197)
Boy how would those trips compare to early the first voyages to the "New World", except that they will probably be more clean, more antiseptic, and their health will be monitored much more closely.
What's worse tuill now no one has pointed this out. What pussies we've become.
A lot (lot) of people died on those first voyages to the New World. Entire ships were lost as well. I don't think anyone wants to send boatloads of astronauts in an expensive investment without guaranteeing that they'll arrive in one piece.
Because even more of them died when dumped on the shores of North America in their first year or two from something unexpected. And there's that whole colony that went missing, Roanoke...
They didn't know there were things as microbes (or that you need to have a diet with vitamin C to avoid scurvy).
They sure knew there was a risk in taking the travel (as there was a risk in every sea travel), but I am pretty sure too that, had they know about these things, they would have taken steps to avoid/minimize the risks.
The conquistadors at the 15th century were able to travel long distances on ships full of diseases, and yet conquered and eliminated the native civilizations of America. Diseases may be a difficulty, but they won't prevent space travel.
.. given that sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources. As well all know, can do science research on Mars at a fraction of the cost of sending a space shuttle into a week lond trip around earth, much less the cost of the human mission that has a chance of reaching Mars. And don't tell me the B.S. about colonizing Mars. Earth will remain hospitable for life for hundreds of millions of years. If there is going to be some kind of catastrophe on Earth, it's far more likely th
sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources
Most of what we do is a waste of resources. Why do you go for a walk? Why do you eat at a restaurant? Why do you drive your sports car? Why do you need a hobby? Why do you have a pool in your backyard? Why, in fact, do you have a house that is larger than 100 sq. ft. per person?
In a non-wasteful world people would be confined to cocoons, immobilized (to not waste energy on movement) and fed liquid paste that contains exactly as
two words... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:two words... (Score:5, Informative)
WTF? How is a first post mentioning a "diversified ecosystem" redundant? Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does. It also tends to help keep pathogens numbers down, since even pathogens have predators/competitors in a diversified ecosystem.
Parent
Re:two words... (Score:4, Interesting)
For any kind of successful very longterm space missions one needs heavy shielding at least equivalent to the atmosphere we have down here on earth. More radiation (even living at higher altitudes with less atmospheric shielding, or even near an ozone hole region) increases the rates of mutations miscarriages and cancers, but also the rate or adaptation to new environments. One of the dangers with non-well-shielded space travel is faster evolution than down here on Earth. But multilayer shielding can compensate for that, and keep mutation levels to lower than natural.
That brings up the question, that maybe lack of radiation is a cause of sicknesses, in a sense of not keeping the immune system well trained. People who live in a completely sterile bacteria free environment have very weak immune systems that lacks training. One still needs a flora to coexist inside the body if for nothing else, for composting intestinal contents. Those same bacteria can cause illnesses, if not kept under check by the immune systems constant vigilance. Still, as far as radiation goes, people coming from areas of high background radiation, such as India, don't seem to suffer much compared to people living in low background radiation areas. If anything, fluoride in their drinking water is the bigger problem for them, and background radiation is a relative nonissue. Perhaps a certain dose of background radiation is like a vitamin, increases health by keeping the immune system trained.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, as far as radiation goes, people coming from areas of high background radiation, such as India
India has a traditionally high population density. You need to find a better example that doesn't have enormous alternate factors for explaining disease resistance.
Three words... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does.
Lots of sex.
Without condoms (and with swallowing). Regular exchange of bodily fluids also keeps your immune system ticking over. Regular sex might help morale as well.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Your immune system responds better if there are constant challenges to it, which is what a diversified ecosystem does.
Lots of sex.
Without condoms (and with swallowing). Regular exchange of bodily fluids also keeps your immune system ticking over. Regular sex might help morale as well.
No but yeah but yeah but yeah no but yeah no but yeah... ...but no
because that may result in this [littlebritain.tv]! And that's no diversity what you see although it may be interesting to watch this move around Mars for a while and it cleans things up here a little.
Re:two words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, I was thinking those words were gonna be: selective breeding.
Until that works out, I suggest we focus on telescopes and probes, rovers, and those things that float in seas of frozen methane. Also as a way to reduce our carbon emissions by using lower weight vehicles.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:two words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, yes...
There are two basic possibilities here:
1) low gravity enhances microbe growth. -- Eh, probably not enough in itself, since the microbial balance would probably still be roughly the same.
2) if the environment is made too sterile, it actually encourages pathogens, which are normally kept largely in check by other microbes. This is actually the root of the problem with hospitals and resistant infections today, to the point that some are considering returning to a less-sterile general environment. -- Easily solved; just don't sterilize the equipment in the first place. In short, maintain the diversified natural microbial population, to discourage overgrowth of pathogens.
Parent
MiR? ISS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MiR? ISS? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure that those people had constant refuellings with air over the years (maintenance). There isn't in a closed environment like a shuttle to Mars.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then I would posit that the first step would be a station or stationary ship, in space, to run a "no movement" drill for the trip to Mars.
If it takes 2 years, then that ship has to last 2 years without any help unless there is an extreme emergency.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There isn't in a closed environment like a shuttle to Mars.
I don't think that that is really true or relevant. Even the long duration ISS expeditions typically had only 1 or 2 Progress spacecrafts dock with them during the mission. I would imagine that any deep space missions would have provisions kept in lockers or modules that would be opened in time (i.e., whatever perturbations are caused by a Progress supply mission would be similar to that caused by opening a previously closed supply module). BTW,
Re:MiR? ISS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:MiR? ISS? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:MiR? ISS? (Score:4, Informative)
That brings another problem : if you keep the environment completely pathogen free , the immunity of the people there will drop significantly , since it is not being stimulated.
So , when they come home , they will immediately get sick.
Parent
Re:MiR? ISS? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Antibodies don't remain in the body forever.
That's the one of the reasons that you need to vaccinate again after a few years.
And also , pathogens mutate , so your body will have to adapt to it , in order to fight it . Which it can't do in this case. ,that will only be a problem after years , not after a few months.
Offcourse
And it will certainly become a problem if the trip takes generations
Beware of the dreaded SPACE HERPES!!! (Score:5, Funny)
This isn't a first post, but it's the only Ice Pirates reference on Slashdot.
Sterile (Score:2)
Re:Sterile (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
not possible (Score:4, Insightful)
While getting rid of salmonella is good, you can't get rid of all disease causing bacteria. And if the environment you live in is too sterile, your body just becomes more susceptible to other infections and to auto-immune disease.
Injecting antibiotics is about the worst thing you can do because it really messes up your bacterial ecology. Bacteria are a natural part of your body, and if you start killing them with antibiotics, things go wrong. Antibiotics should really only be taken when there is a serious infection present.
In addition to artificial gravity (via rotation), the solution may be to challenge the body with other microbes that are known to be not too harmful, similar to "pro-biotic drinks".
Parent
Re:Sterile (Score:4, Interesting)
Thats what I was thinking. Surely a small capsule with a handful of people surrounded by thousands of miles of near-vacuum is about as close to a clean-room environment as you can get.
Sterilize everything, let them spend a blissful year or two in splendid good health, then worry about their poor shattered immune systems when they get back.
Parent
rotate it (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not rotate the ship for "artificial gravity"?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Instead of making the spaceship that large, they could attach the living quarters to each end of a very long cable, and then slowly rotate the ship. In the center of the cable, they could place a zero-G section which would contain sensors, and possibly
Re:rotate it (Score:4, Funny)
Put a spinning deck inside the spacecraft. Then the astronuats can run around the rim to get exercise .
Oh and put a manual switch for the pod bay door on the outside of the ship in case the computer runs amok.
Parent
Not if the spaceship is inflatable. (Score:5, Interesting)
Look into what Bigelow Aerospace is doing. If you spin an inflated structure fast enough to get 1 G of acceleration, it's the same as doing so with a rigid structure.
-jcr
Parent
Re:Not if the spaceship is inflatable. (Score:5, Funny)
So I am not the only one that wants to take something inflatable with me if I have to go to Mars? Excellent.
Parent
meat (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
> Why do we care about sending our meatbag selves to other planets? I'd be more
> productive if we could just send some strong AI to do it for us.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us shall go on to the stars".
You are more than welcome to stay right there in your mother's basement and watch. You'll be safe and warm. No need to go out into the big scary world at all.
Re:meat (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to say what happens when metal/silicon gets smarter than meat. I am meat, and I care about meat, and green plants like trees too. I chop wood, but I want to see trees in general exist forever. In a sense trees are my very distant siblings, and we share a common eukaryote ancestor going back 2 billion years ago. I also care about non eukaryote life, with whom I share a common ancestor going back to 3 billion years ago. Metal/silicon machines and automation that I create can help me get less tired and get things done that I can't do myself, and that's a big deal, but I don't want to make it so good that I have to fight or compete against it, because I know I would lose. One has to be careful with developing super strong AI if one wants to survive. Can cooperation between metal/silicon and meat be guaranteed forever? What happens when a smarter predator than us appears? Will we be to them as chickens are to us? And more importantly, do they get judged the same way during last judgment day as we do and go to the same Inferno or Paradiso that we do for committing sins?
Parent
We'll have to invent sanitation droids... (Score:2, Funny)
to keep things sterile...
Prototype here:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/photopost/data/813/kryten2.jpg [sitcomsonline.com]
Well, ain't it a bitch. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe we're meant to be on Earth after all? The conditions seem just fine, ... for now at least.
But please, send more robots first. They can do a lot more with a lot less controversy.
Re: (Score:2)
> Maybe we're meant to be on Earth after all?
"Meant" by who?
Long Duration Space Flight (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been ISS Expeditions that have lasted times comparable to at least one way to Mars - Expeditions 4, 6, 8 and 13 at least. There is no microbiological difference between orbiting the Earth and going to Mars, so I would conclude that people should be able to get to Mars just fine.
I still think that truly deep space exploration will require artificial gravity (i.e., spinning spacecraft), but this sounds like FUD to justify research funds to me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is no microbiological difference between orbiting the Earth and going to Mars
Yes there is, ISS gets air resupply regularly!!
What pussies we've become. (Score:5, Insightful)
Boy how would those trips compare to early the first voyages to the "New World", except that they will probably be more clean, more antiseptic, and their health will be monitored much more closely.
What's worse tuill now no one has pointed this out. What pussies we've become.
Re:What pussies we've become. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't know there were things as microbes (or that you need to have a diet with vitamin C to avoid scurvy).
They sure knew there was a risk in taking the travel (as there was a risk in every sea travel), but I am pretty sure too that, had they know about these things, they would have taken steps to avoid/minimize the risks.
Don't take ignorance for courage.
Diseases never prevented long distance travels (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the conquistadors' diseases helped them to conquer and eliminate the native civilizations of America.
Who knows, maybe our first gift to aliens, when we first meet them, will be some of the nasty critters in the human body.
On the other hand, maybe when we reach Mars, we might run into some kind of Andromeda Strain.
"Yippee! We discovered life on Mars! Um, but its not quite how we imagined it."
That's surrender monkey talk (Score:2)
Kinda irrelevant .. (Score:2)
.. given that sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources. As well all know, can do science research on Mars at a fraction of the cost of sending a space shuttle into a week lond trip around earth, much less the cost of the human mission that has a chance of reaching Mars. And don't tell me the B.S. about colonizing Mars. Earth will remain hospitable for life for hundreds of millions of years. If there is going to be some kind of catastrophe on Earth, it's far more likely th
Re: (Score:3)
sending humans to Mars is pretty much a 99.99% waste of everyone's resources
Most of what we do is a waste of resources. Why do you go for a walk? Why do you eat at a restaurant? Why do you drive your sports car? Why do you need a hobby? Why do you have a pool in your backyard? Why, in fact, do you have a house that is larger than 100 sq. ft. per person?
In a non-wasteful world people would be confined to cocoons, immobilized (to not waste energy on movement) and fed liquid paste that contains exactly as
I'm not a rocket scientist, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tie a rope around the crew module and the lander. Separate them by a few hundred feet and start them orbiting each other. Instant gravity.
Borrow a superconducting magnet from the LHC and place it at the center of the 2 modules. Shields up.
Now what's the problem?
Sure, piece of cake. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, by the time we have the technologies you propose, we're just as likely to have ion propulsion that can get us there in less than a month.
-jcr
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, if USA did not engage in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it would have the money to build that spaceship *by itself*.