Study: NASA can't afford a trip to Mars, but deserves the cash to do it. Stephen Hawking: Manned vs Robotic Space Missions? NASA currently operates more than 50 robotic spacecraft that are studying Earth and reaching throughout the solar system, from Mercury to Pluto and beyond. Another 40 unmanned NASA missions are in development, and space agencies in Europe, Russia, Japan, India and China are running or building their own robotic craft. What is not commonly known however is that many of NASA's leading scientists also champion human exploration as a worthy goal in its own right and as a critically important part of space science in the 21st century. In a past issue of Scientific American Jim Bell, an astronomer and planetary scientist at Cornell University, and author of “Postcards from Mars,” notes that “…you might think that researchers like me who are involved in robotic space exploration would dismiss astronaut missions as costly and unnecessary.”
The debate over the meaning of the Viking results, Bova concludes, is still unsettled, more than 30 years later. Link: Posted by Casey Kazan. What are the health risks of space travel? 15 December 2012Last updated at 19:44 ET By Philippa Roxby Health reporter, BBC News The acceleration and deceleration of spaceflight could be a health issue for some space tourists Astronauts are limited to spending six months on the International Space Station, around 200 miles above Earth, for a good reason. The loss of bone and muscle mass they experience in space is so profound that they cannot stay any longer. But what about the health impact of forthcoming suborbital flights for space tourists who are not fit, highly-trained individuals?
According to North American scientists writing in the British Medical Journal article, GPs should be prepared to answer patients' queries about their suitability for space travel in the near future. Yet there will be few GPs experienced enough in space medicine to provide advice. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote End QuoteDr Jon Scottspace scientist "It's highly likely you will feel sick or be sick and that's a real concern.
G-force Key to life. Living in space / Astronauts / Human Spaceflight. Yuri Gagarin on his way to the launch pad Like every other living creature we know of, humans evolved at the bottom of a gravity well. We take the Earth's tug for granted, and so do our bodies. So it's not surprising that our bodies behave oddly in orbit. What is surprising is that humans turn out to adapt remarkably well to zero-g (more precisely, microgravity). Since then, scientists around the world have had the benefit of years of data on the effects of long-term space living. Even in space .... Weightlessness itself is the most important and the most obvious influence on life in space. There are other factors, too. Human psychology plays an important part in the story, too.
Still, there is no shortage of applicants for astronaut positions. The body Jean-Pierre Haigneré returns from MIR Microgravity affects just about everything in the human body, and usually for the worst. The vestibulary system and "Space Adaptation Syndrome" Heart, circulation and body fluids The human heart Psychology. The Benefits Of Space Exploration. The dawning of the space age opened our eyes to the universe and the planet we inhabit, and the ability of humankind to venture beyond Earth's atmosphere triggered a revolution in science - on this there was no disagreement among the Russian scientists interviewed by RIA Novosti in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight.
However, many of the scientists expressed doubts about the need for further manned flights, saying that robots are now the best way to explore space. View from space We live at the bottom of an immense ocean of air, protected from harmful radiation and high-energy space particles by the atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field. But this layer of protection also presents a challenge for astronomers because it only allows a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum through - the visible light range and some radio waves. "This was the beginning of astronomy conducted from beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Robots only? Why Space Exploration Is a Job for Humans - Jared Keller. The conventional wisdom of space exploration suggests that robotic probes are both more scientifically efficient and cost effective. Not so, argues a professor of planetary science.
Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot, poses beside the deployed flag of the United States during the Apollo XI moon landing July 20, 1969. [Reuters] When the Space Shuttle Atlantis rolled to a stop in July 2011, NASA bid farewell to the nation's symbol of manned spaceflight. At the core of Crawford's argument is that human beings are much better at performing the type of geological fieldwork that makes planetary exploration scientifically valuable: they're faster and significantly more versatile than even the most advanced autonomous probes. "We may be able to make robots smarter, but they'll never get tot he point where they can make on the spot decisions in the field, where they can recognize things for being important even if you don't expect them or anticipate them," argues Crawford.
Is Human Spaceflight Worth It? If you ever wanted a quote that summarized virtually everything wrong with science and research funding today, a recent musing on how Congress would've viewed building a particle accelerator to match CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in light of physicists' inability to find the Higgs boson comes very close. "Congress may feel that its 1993 decision to cancel the American alternative to CERN… may have been the right move one after all: to spend billions of taxpayer dollars in search of a particle that likely does not exist would have been wasteful.
" In other words, turning the world of physics upside down and making scientists question the firmly established Standard Model, forcing us to rethink much of what we know about the universe, would be a bad investment because the scientists wouldn't have succeeded in doing what they originally set out to do. Never mind that in science, failures can be just as valuable as successes, and sometimes even more so. The Spin-off Argument. Never Send a Machine to Do a Human's Job. Humans aren't suited for space.
We're not good with radiation or microgravity, and extended stays in space radically increase our risk of cancer, shrink our hearts, atrophy our muscles, and make our bones brittle. But that's what happens when you're a complex organism evolving on a particular planet. You have to rely on your technology to survive the rigors of space travel. Of course that technology has to be very complex and expensive and its designs face severe restrictions posed by the limits of the human body. And this is why some of us are starting to hear chatter about how impractical it is to send humans into space. Send in the Robots The argument goes something like this: Since humans either wouldn't be able to survive the stresses of prolonged space exploration, or would face immense hurdles posed by traveling to other worlds, we should be focused on sending new generations of robot probes to do our most ambitious exploration projects.
The Human Requirement Humans are explorers. Benefits-Stemming-from-Space-Exploration-2013-TAGGED. The Risk for Radiation to Space Exploration. Race to Mars : Known effects of long-term space flights on the human body. Known effects of long-term space flights on the human body Although space travel looks easy on TV and in the movies, in reality it causes both short term and long term health problems for a spacecraft's most delicate cargo: its crew.
On Earth, gravity is a force our bodies have to work against, which keeps our cells, bones and muscles strong. Remove the force of gravity from the equation and over the duration of a long-term micro-gravity space flight, human bodies undergo dramatic changes. That's why some experts feel artificial gravity will be necessary for the crew whenever possible during the Mars mission. Artificial gravity at even partial Earth-normal would help reduce the severity of some of the space-related health problems, and helps ensure the crew will arrive on Mars fit enough to carry out their duties there. Short term: Space sickness Almost 40 percent of astronauts experience a form of motion sickness in space. Muscle loss Without gravity, everything in space floats.