bbopf.blogg.se

Setting aside the social and psychological problems that could arise among people trapped together inside an interplanetary mobile home ( SN: 11/29/14, p. “The moon was like a camping trip when you think about going to Mars,” says Erik Antonsen, an emergency medicine physician and aerospace engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The length of the mission brings its own dangers. Researchers don’t know just how harmful that radiation is, but lab experiments suggest it could raise astronauts’ risk of cancer and other diseases. Microgravity allows fluid buildup in the head, which can cause vision problems, and adventurers cruising through interplanetary space will be continually pelted with high-energy charged particles that zip right through the metal belly of a spacecraft. Once outside of Earth’s protective gravitational and magnetic fields, microgravity and radiation become big worries. Time on the planet will be sandwiched between a six- to nine-month journey there plus the same long trip back. “The mission to Mars is likely going to be four to six individuals together in a can the size of a Winnebago for three years,” says Leticia Vega, associate chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program in Houston. Douglas Quaid’s jaunt to the Red Planet in Total Recall was smooth sailing until he came under fire at Martian customs and immigration.īut in real life, just getting to Mars and back will be rife with dangers that have nothing to do with extreme weather or armed gunmen. The Martian’s Mark Watney was fine until a dust storm left him fending for himself. (Aug.On movie missions to Mars, getting there is the easy part. Still, the chance to float in zero gravity, even if only vicariously, can be surprising in what it reveals about us. Unlike having sex or being dead, though, space travel pertains only to a few, leaving the rest of us unsure what it all amounts to. Previously, Roach engaged in topics everyone could relate to. However, larger questions about the "worth" or potential benefits of space travel remain ostensibly unasked, effectively rendering these wild and well-researched facts to the status of trivia. Roach's humor and determined curiosity keep the journey lively, and her profiles of former astronauts are especially telling. Readers learn that throwing up in a space helmet could be life-threatening, that Japanese astronaut candidates must fold a thousand origami paper cranes to test perseverance and attention to detail, and that cadavers are gaining popularity over crash dummies when studying landings. Despite all the high-tech science that has resulted in space shuttles and moonwalks, the most crippling hurdles of cosmic travel are our most primordial human qualities: eating, going to the bathroom, having sex and bathing, and not dying in reentry.

Roach (Stiff) once again proves herself the ideal guide to a parallel universe.