
Space Aging - apsec112
http://geroscience.com/space-aging/
======
blamestross
This is one of the places that in-situ materials change the game. Having a
metallic (or even iceball) asteroid in earth orbit really changes the formula
on the availability of shielding and fuel for a mission anywhere. Honestly I
am in the "skip Mars" camp and I think we should go straight to the asteroids.

~~~
nine_k
Shielding mass = inertial mass. How do we give it enough delta-V?

Bringing from Earth a few tons of nuclear-powered jet engine to use water as
propellant would take building such an engine first. We're not even close.

Chemical engines are lightweight and well-understood. Lifting kilotons of
chemical fuel is not feasible, though. So we need to build an orbital chemical
/ cryo facility to produce at least something as simple as liquid hydrogen and
liquid oxygen, again by the kiloton.

This is on top of building an orbital shipyard to construct the actual
spaceship, with all that heavy shielding around it, and the skeleton to carry
it, the fuel, and the habitable compartment. It's going to be a spectacular
feat of space-borne metallurgy, mechanical processing, including precise
machining, quite some chemistry to support that all and produce necessary
plastic parts, saying nothing about the power plant to feed this all.

Here we assume that we have an asteroid that has enough metals, carbon, and
water neatly parked on Earth orbit. How do we achieve that, and how many
decades would it take to bring it here, is not even considered.

This all would be great to have! But getting straight to Mars seems simple in
comparison.

~~~
Density
> Bringing from Earth a few tons of nuclear-powered jet engine to use water as
> propellant would take building such an engine first. We're not even close.

That's not true. NASA built and tested designs for a nuclear engine in the
80s, human rated even, and the results were spectacular.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA)

------
nine_k
The scoop: radiation damage during space travel is similar to aging damage.
Known anti-aging drugs help. More is needed to make interplanetary travel
feasible.

~~~
copperx
> Known anti-aging drugs help.

Anti-aging drugs?

------
golemotron
As we move into space we're going to notice just how sensitive we are to our
environment. It's like the higher rate of skin cancer among people with less
melanin - not noticed until people moved far away from where their ancestors
lived.

Gravity is more pervasive. It affects everything in biology and why shouldn't
it? It's been a constant in the background that every direction evolution took
transitively depends on.

