NASA scientists are intensifying their investigation into a vision disorder that affects 70% of astronauts on long-duration space missions, as new research reveals the condition poses mounting risks for future Mars exploration 1 2. Space- Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS) causes crew members to experience blurred reading vision, swollen optic discs, and flattened eyeballs that can persist for years after returning to Earth
I disagree completely. There are many problems associated with living in low gravity or freefall, but I don’t advocate living like that. Rotating habitats are not that hard.
Medical problems there may still be, it’s true. But I would argue that for every challenge we face in manufacturing, we’ll see just as many advantages. And energy is a completely different story, energy is just easier in space than on earth. Certainly for space around Erath, Mars, or anything closer to the sun, solar is the obvious choice. It’s cheap, steady and runs 24/7 with no weather or nights.
I would argue that having our priorities straight would mean providing NASA with 20x their current annual budget. We could easily account for that cost but adjusting our spending on tax breaks for the wealthy and new military programs. As it is, we’re mostly ignoring space rather than investing in it.
Don’t get me wrong, earth is great, biologically it’s perfect for us. But societally, it’s limiting, and we’ll never achieve more if we don’t actually reach for it.
“I disagree completely” with a statement that’s never been disproven in the entire existence of our species?.. This is literally an article about long term astronauts suffering a serious medical complication, and that’s not even a lifetime up there. You think we could have a baby and raise it in orbit? You understand the radiation shielding isn’t perfect? You understand there are unexplained medical complications in bone density, muscle density, and heart function for returning astronauts? You understand that new bacterial and microbial colonies have manifested in the iss and we don’t know anything about the long-term effects that will have?
“Energy is easier in space”
Alright, here you’re just brazenly wrong. Energy is so so much more difficult in space due to the vacuum. Managing thermal effects is exponentially more difficult, and it’s not as easy as just “slap some solar panels up” are you even familiar with the failure rate of solar panels due to space debris? Even the smallest of micro debris can pick up significant momentum with no atmospheric drag and slight gravitational acceleration.
The budget is one thing we agree on. We spend vastly more than that on yachts so it’s not even an issue. I don’t believe you have any idea how difficult space really is though, and I encourage you to study it further because it’s not the escape you hope it will be. Not in our lifetimes. Not without a miracle.
Yes I disagree… Your argument was:
Which is a weird stance, as humans have been living in space continually for the last 25 years… (With zero gaps btw). But the word “uninhabitable” implies more, it suggests that it can’t be done. But I think it’s clear that this is a limitation of funding and priorities. If we wanted to build larger habitats in space, we could, we have the know-how.
And again… While this appears to be an article about serious complications to living in space, it’s almost certainly about serious complications to living in zero G. If that sounds like a minor distinction, know that it really isn’t. Because all that stuff you mentioned, heart issues, bone density, etc, those are all 0G issues. And do I think it’s safe to have a baby in orbit, in 1G? Yeah, I think it is.
Radiation and shielding really aren’t a huge problem or a huge challenge either, there are clear ways to mitigate the issue. Specifically, you can use your water supply as shielding. Also, the problem scales well with size, as your habitat gets larger, shielding requirements become a lower and lower percentage of the habitat’s mass.
Oh so you must know that the original solar arrays installed on the ISS 25 years ago are still running then? We’ve added additional arrays over the years and recently put in much more efficient rollout arrays to account for increased power usage. Yeah, occasionally debris will knock out individual cells, but that doesn’t lead to the whole array going down. So yes solar arrays degrade over time, especially in low earth orbit, but it’s not like the original ones have been blasted to bits, they still work 25 years later.
And yeah you need radiators for heat management. This is not an enormous cost or engineering challenge.
Too sum up, there are a few extra considerations for developing radiation resistant panels and providing adequate cooling, but when you figure that out (and we have) it really is as simple as “slapping some solar panels up”.
You’re one of the people I hate when it comes to this. You see insane engineering challenges as just easy because thousands of very clever engineers have already spent billions and their lifetimes working it out for you, but you’re so far from actually understanding the science and challenges in their full depth. Nobody has lived in space for 25 years. No human has been raised in space. These challenges are not just from 0g and your theoretical radiation shielding has not been proven nor is it just as easy as “surround yourself with your water supply”. None. Of. Space. Is. Easy. Living on this planet is as easy as being born. If it wasn’t for millions of people constantly working to feed the societial machine that let’s us even have a few people in orbit at a time, with constant launches to resupply, as well as other considerations, it would be impossible. Even the iss you mention is being deorbited in 2027 because it’s not long-term sustainable and has developed untraceable leaks. I cannot believe how easy you think it is. You’re hopelessly lost in the sauce there buddy.
Close, I see engineering challenges as possible and potentially already solved exactly because thousands of very clever engineers have already spent billions and their lifetimes working it out for us. It looks to me like the issue is that you refuse to differentiate between “hard” and “impossible”. Obviously space is hard, but there’s a lot we have the ability to do right now. All we need is the will to fund it, we already have the experts ready to do it.
You act like this is my theory, this is generally considered the plan for interplanetary missions and long term space stations going forward. It’s an old idea, I couldn’t even tell you when it was first proposed. And as for “unproven”, water is the primary material used to shield nuclear reactors, the methodology could not be more proven.
The ISS is only the second space station NASA has built, space station version 2.0, still sort of a prototype. We built it in the 90s and we’ve learned an incredible amount in the process, but of course it wasn’t going to last forever. But with proper funding it stands to reason that we could build something better today using everything we’ve learned so far. To say we shouldn’t because it’s hard… well that’s just not how progress is made.
You’re strawman arguing with yourself. Nowhere, not once, have I stated we shouldn’t. I’ve only stated the true, which is space is not habitable for humans. Perhaps your uninformed as to what habitable means. Perhaps your deranged. I’ve no clue. But if you continue, I just want you to know, you’re arguing with yourself.
I mean, there’s the post I initially responded to:
You’re not saying we shouldn’t explore space, just that we should wait until we can genetically engineer ourselves to live in that environment. But is that not the same as saying “we should stop for now”? My entire response to that post was simply to say that it wasn’t too early to start, and you seem to have taken offense to the sentiment.
So that makes this, what, an attempt at gaslighting? But perhaps I’m deranged, surely that would explain your faulty logic.
If you equated stop destroying the planet with stopping space development, that’s on you. I clarified my stance in a comment below it minutes later.
I take offense to you and people like you thinking space is habitable or easy instead of insanely environmentally challenging, unknown, and complex. Seeing it as an escape instead of the immense and violent challenge it is. It’s disrespectful to both life and the accomplishments of those before you.
So yes, you are deranged. I’ve not attempted any gaslighting. You continue to argue with yourself, ignore nuances, and call my logic faulty when it’s not. You hand wave immense complexities of shit you **do not understand ** just because you’ve seemingly read the wiki on it. It’s astounding. You even think space is habitable, which it is undebatbly at this time, not, and that’s before comparing it to our immeasurably more habitable planet. The frustration I experience reading the shit you post is from this inherent fallacy you’ve attached yourself to. I even agreed with the immense increase in space funding you asked for, explicitly, and yet you seemingly doubt my alignment to continued scientific development.