
Effects of One Year of Space Travel on the Human Body (2016) - LearnerHerzog
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/scott-kelly-mikhail-kornienko/471717/?single_page=true
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ortusdux
A reciently documented phenomenon that surprised me was the observation that
astronauts' core body temp can raise as high as 1°C after a few months in
space. Sustaining an elevated CBT can cause both physical and cognitive
issues. The human body does some strange things in zero-G.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15560-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-15560-w)

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LearnerHerzog
_" on a trip to Mars, it’s distance from Earth, not duration of spaceflight,
that becomes the bigger enemy. The ISS orbits about 200 miles away, just
within Earth’s protective magnetic field. There, astronauts receive 10 times
the usual amount of radiation, high-speed particles from the sun or other
parts of the galaxy that tear through DNA molecules, that increase their risk
of dying from cancer. Farther out, the exposure would get much worse."_

How much worse does radiation exposure get?

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narag
Whatever it is, for a long trip they'll use some isolation, maybe magnets or a
thick lead layer.

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stcredzero
_maybe magnets or a thick lead layer._

No and no. Permanent magnets that would be strong enough to be effective would
be too heavy. The power system to support effective electromagnets would be
too heavy. It goes without saying that a thick lead layer would be too heavy.

One of the actual schemes discussed would be to have a solar flare emergency
shelter that the astronauts could go to in case of a solar flare. This would
use water as the shielding material, which would save weight, as water would
have to be brought along in any case.

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shrimp_emoji
> _Permanent magnets that would be strong enough to be effective would be too
> heavy._

Heavy to shove out to sea from shore, but not if you've got a dock! (Read:
build the craft already in space. And then have some mean engines.)

But this is all untenable; we need to become robots and cut out the malarkey.

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stcredzero
_Heavy to shove out to sea from shore, but not if you 've got a dock!_

So you're proposing something like Aldrin's _cycler_ craft. Given our
experience on Mir and the ISS, we are going to have to get a whole lot better
at environmental engineering to be able to do that for human passengers. I've
read that the inside of the ISS smells like some kind of porta potty.

 _we need to become robots and cut out the malarkey._

I hope we will still have _" human fundamentalists."_ (To use Charles Stross'
term)

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logfromblammo
Electromechanical robotics is but an intermediate step. I can't wait to be an
engineered lichen, with self-repair systems lifted from _Deinococcus
radiodurans_.

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perl4ever
I'm inclined to think that it's just too soon to go into space. It will truly
become practical when biotech allows us to evolve into completely different
forms that are more durable.

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jaredhansen
If you like this article you'll probably also like astronaut Scott Kelly's
book _Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery_ [1]. My wife got it
for me as a christmas present and so far it's really enjoyable.

[1] Amazon: [http://a.co/bL0Tavv](http://a.co/bL0Tavv)

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SPBesui
He also has a book for children called My Journey to the Stars:
[http://a.co/11xrP6e](http://a.co/11xrP6e)

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Sir_Cmpwn
I really wish we'd invest in developing a centrifugal alternative to gravity
in space. It's good to know how the human body is affected by weightlessness
but why bother?

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nine_k
The problem with a torus-form habitat is that it fits poorly onto a typical
rocket. You can only fit a (long) tube onto a rocket.

This means that a non-trivial building effort is required in space, as opposed
to just attaching more cylinders together, ISS-style. Inflated structures have
some promise here, but you probably also need something more solid to attach
life-critical systems to, and something thicker to serve as a radiation
shield, even while below the Van Allen belt.

This is of course doable, but it's a new, untried territory, which means
expensive R&D and even more expensive orbital operations. Without a pressing
need to keep humans in space for years, it's unlikely to be undertaken. It's
cheaper to build more efficient shuttle craft for space stations, and e.g.
more efficient engines for a rocket to Mars, to cut the trip time.

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stcredzero
_The problem with a torus-form habitat is that it fits poorly onto a typical
rocket. You can only fit a (long) tube onto a rocket._

No, but a cable fits nicely into a rocket. Dividing up the ship into two pods
would get you a nice long radius to minimize Coriolis effects. If one pod
contains a nuclear reactor, for which you need separation from the crew
compartment, then it's quite convenient.

