Sell the SLS/Artemis/Orion program to me

[Peelee]

We are all made of star dust.

That's a bit pessimistic, isn't it? I prefer a more grandiose idea. Give it a few billion years and stars will be made of me dust.

[Radar]

That's a bit pessimistic, isn't it? I prefer a more grandiose idea. Give it a few billion years and stars will be made of me dust.

It's funny how optimism and pessimism are a matter of perspective: an optimist believes we live in the best of all worlds, while a pessimist is worrying that it might actually be true.

[Peelee]

It's funny how optimism and pessimism are a matter of perspective: an optimist believes we live in the best of all worlds, while a pessimist is worrying that it might actually be true.

Every time I hear that phrase I have to stop and admire how clever it is.

[Tyndmyr]

At least currently those astronauts get placed there by Russian spacescrafts from a Russian base(the US despecrated their human space program after the space race.)

They used to, but that's largely a SpaceX task now, thanks to the Dragon capsule. They've already done 30 trips to the ISS with it, so it's pretty routine at this point.

The USG program is indeed pretty limited in human capability, but Russia isn't the only game in town.

[Smoutwortel]

They used to, but that's largely a SpaceX task now, thanks to the Dragon capsule. They've already done 30 trips to the ISS with it, so it's pretty routine at this point.

The USG program is indeed pretty limited in human capability, but Russia isn't the only game in town.

Ah, once again tripped over the ancient nature of my knowledge.
I didn't know that yet.

[pendell]

On the topic of magic and science I present this little tidbit of Tudor age medicine

Got a headache? Then rub your forehead a rope that was used to hang a criminal. Suffer from rheumatism? Then wear the skin of a donkey. In pain with gout? Boil a red-haired dog in oil, add worms and the marrow from pig bones. Rub the mixture in. A painful liver? Drink a pint of ale every morning for a week - with nine head-lice drowned in it.

Are you bald? Use a shampoo made from the juice of crushed beetles. When the head is clean then rub in grease made from the fat of a dead fox. Are you a martyr to asthma? Swallow young frogs or live spiders, cover them in butter to help them slide down easier. Other crazy cures included powdered human skull, bone-marrow mixed with sweat, a stone that has killed a she-bear and fresh cream mixed with the blood of a black cat's tail.

I, for one, am glad as an asthma sufferer there is such a thing as Albuterol and we've moved on since then. Some of these treatments suggests warty old women boiling stuff in cauldrons, except of course that's grotesquely unfair to women with cauldrons. This being the early modern age, I suspect that all of these treatments were proposed by Men who were the Highest Scientific Authority of their times. Which is why it was written down in books and passed down through the ages. I'm just glad experimental science double-checked those treatments and didn't simply accept them on authority!

ETA: Apparently there's a British show called Horrible Histories had an entire subset called 'historical paramedics' which showed this sort of thing across the ages. I have to see that show at some point.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Bohandas]

There's a number of operations where having even a little gravity is vastly better than having none, which would make a surface base on the moon useful.

Plus the moon's going to have a LOT more real-estate to work with than any space station that isn't pure science-fiction

We are all made of star dust.

Spiders from Mars, on the other hand, is something we'll have to make happen by bringing them there ourselves

Have you ever heard of spin gravity? Designs for this type of station have existed for a long time, and are still being proposed. Once you get much beyond the ISS level of space station, you can generate artificial gravity via spin, so there's no split between "people who live in gravity" and "people who don't." There's differences, clearly, but not some sort of fundamental bar to immigration from one to the other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrLey-pX7Bc&t=232s

Astronomy is actually particularly bad in this area. The way stars are named, for example, is ludicrous, being based around what a bunch of astronomers were able to see through their telescopes between 1800 and 1950 and not on anything useful like a numeric system using coordinates, magnitude, or type.

Don't forget that they also classify Neon as a metal

If you realize that the only sources you have are explicitly fictional, then I'm not sure why you're trying to insist that it is the correct name? L

Because it's a much more commonly used system. I'm not sure of the exact demographics but I'd bet dollars to donuts that science fiction fans outnumber people working in fields overseen by the IAU by at least an order of magnitude. That said, this only applies to the "sol" end of this conversation as "luna" isn't used much in science-fiction; that's more of a poetry thing.

Also, hey, at least we didn't name our galaxy "the Galaxy". Small victory there.

Isn;t "milky way" just a translation of the roots of the word "galaxy"?

[Peelee]

Because it's a much more commonly used system.

Cool, but that has no bearing on what it's actually called. If, somehow, the number of Superman comics ballooned out to make the math comparable, "Metropolis" still wouldn't be the actual name for the Big Apple.

Isn;t "milky way" just a translation of the roots of the word "galaxy"?

Yeah, those Greeks were a wiley bunch. Like I said, small victory. But hey, at least there's a specific name and a generic name, and we're not straight up calling it "the Galaxy".

[Bohandas]

The scientific community doesn't use imperial units either, but they're still valid

[Peelee]

The scientific community doesn't use imperial units either, but they're still valid

Neither do Americans, for what it's worth. Disregarding what "it's still valid" means as far as names go. I could call the Sun "Florg" and if you know what I'm talking about then it's just as valid as "Sol", but it's still not its name.

[Bohandas]

If people knew what I meant then I used the correct word

4) There's another fundamental point I think is being missed: The "Overview effect" is supposed to trigger a realization that we're all in this together because we all live on this big, beautiful ball. But for someone born in orbit or space, that is not true. They AREN'T in this with us because they ARE different. And if gravity has the effect it does , they are cut off from the people on that blue globe with no realistic hope of ever joining them. Far from a symbol of unity, having that big, blue planet looming overhead with its teeming billions may prove to be a symbol of oppression rather than a symbol of hope and unity.

What effect would gravity have that couldn't be overcome with a course of physical therapy?

(I mean, the overview effect is probably bunk regardless, but I don't see this being the thing that invalidates it)

I am normally a strong supporter of both manned and unmanned space exploration but whenever I read about Artemis, I wince because I don't see a great scientific justification for the program. Is anyone on GitP forums willing to defend the stated purpose of the program?

According to wikipedia one of the program's long term goals is extraction of lunar resources. We're going to need some new sources of mineral resources if we want to keep technological society up and running.

Another long term goal is establishing a sustainable presence on the moon, which would be a good step towards true colonization, which would be a good step towards getting me away from this accursed planet; I think that in the long term I may NEED to go somewhere that doesn't have any history or any traditions or else I'm going to lose my mind. Edit: Although realistically I'll probably too old or even dead by the time they get it to that point. Maybe I can move to Antarctica, that would probably be easier in any case.

EDIT:
Also, the moon would make an ideal place for industry, firstly because massive objects would be easy to move and secondly because we wouldn't have to worry about messing up ecosystems because the moon hasn't got any.

[Radar]

What effect would gravity have that couldn't be overcome with a course of physical therapy?

Of the top of my had, it is mostly about bone density loss and muscle atrophy. If this is a short trip, things can be fixed, but the longer you stay in microgravity, the worse the effect will be and physical therapy is not a miracle.

[Peelee]

If people knew what I meant then I used the correct word

Oh my, this sound alike something I should have already talked about, as obvious a point as it seems to be at first.

While I'm all for linguistic descriptivism, proper names tend to be prescriptivist. "luna" (lowercase) is not a word I've encountered in English as another word for "moon" (lowercase). It is the word for "moon" in Spanish and Italian (and possibly a few other romantic languages), and "Luna" (capitalized) as a name is the name for "the Moon" (capitalized) in Spanish and Italian (and whatever other languages as general linguistic convention goes). The English name, however, is "the Moon", not "Luna", as outlined by the IAU.

The sun is named "the Sun" and the moon is named "the Moon", despite that our descriptors of them derive from the Latin and come to "solar" and "lunar" rather than "sunnar" and "moonar", but as already described upthread, English is basically a trashcan language that just gets things dumped in it all willy nilly. Works for words, not for proper names. Far be it from me to say that English isn't stupid.

In the English-speaking world (and globally if in a scientific paper meant for international spread, as English is the language of science), it's the Moon, not Luna.

Why you speaking Spanish?


Technically it just implies that the listener implicitly knows which moon is being spoken about, which would work well in the vast majority of discussions that aren't already apparently about other moons.

Besides, that's the IAU's hill to die on.

It's not pedantry, though. It's a proper name. You can say my ancestral home is Österreich, but I'd ask why you are speaking German, because in English it's Austria. You could call my friend Jorge "George", but his name is still Jorge, not George. Proper names are fun like that.

You can call it Luna all you like, but someone asking "why you speaking Italian" shouldnt come as a surprise if you do. Just as you may not care that everyone calls it Austria here and you insist on calling it Österreich doesnt mean anyone is being pedantic when they point out you're suddenly speaking German.

What you're describing is called "linguistic descriptivism", and hey, I wonder if anybody said anything about that a week ago?

[gomipile]

I think that descriptivism wins out on balance here, since this isn't a professional environment. We don't have to pass peer review to get each of our posts onto the forum. The audience isn't restricted to a set of professionals who all share the same technical lexicon, either.

My opinion is that in a case like this, best practice would be to make a single FYI post pointing out what the technical term is for the purposes of reading and writing official communications within a particular field of study or other scope, followed by letting all further casual use &$%ing slide.

[Peelee]

I think that descriptivism wins out on balance here, since this isn't a professional environment. We don't have to pass peer review to get each of our posts onto the forum. The audience isn't restricted to a set of professionals who all share the same technical lexicon, either.

If you want to talk about the most shared lexicon, "the Moon" wins by a mile, though. Every English speaking person knows exactly what body is being talked about with "the Moon", which is not the same case with "Luna".

That being said...

My opinion is that in a case like this, best practice would be to make a single FYI post pointing out what the technical term is for the purposes of reading and writing official communications within a particular field of study or other scope, followed by letting all further casual use &$%ing slide.

I like this proposal, it seems perfectly reasonable.

[Bohandas]

Regarding the name of the moon, depending on your opinion on the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, and whether you think it can still be considered the same object after exchanging a significant portion of its mass with material from the Earth (and also being melted into slag and partly vaporized), its official name may be Theia

Sort of a Trinimac-Malacath situation going on with Theia and the Moon

Of the top of my had, it is mostly about bone density loss and muscle atrophy. If this is a short trip, things can be fixed, but the longer you stay in microgravity, the worse the effect will be and physical therapy is not a miracle.

On the other hand, neither is microgravity a magical curse. Calcium and vitamin D supplements and all the normal interventions should help reduce bone loss, exercise should work as well to build muscle in microgravity as it does on earth (provided that the exercise isn't based on lifting things. Perhaps dynamic tension exercises would be ideal?), and the cardiovascular effects can be countered with a g-suit while on earth (perhaps supplemented by training with some kind of reverse-g-suit prior to leaving the moon). And in any case once we get to the "ON the moon" phase we're just dealing wih low gravity, not microgravity

[Peelee]

Regarding the name of the moon, depending on your opinion on the Ship of Theseus thought experiment, and whether you think it can still be considered the same object after exchanging a significant portion of its mass with material from the Earth (and also being melted into slag and partly vaporized), its official name may be Theia

Notwithstanding that the Theia Hypothesis is only conjecture and that the official name is the name given by officials, I take it?

[Radar]

On the other hand, neither is microgravity a magical curse. Calcium and vitamin D supplements and all the normal interventions should help reduce bone loss, exercise should work as well to build muscle in microgravity as it does on earth (provided that the exercise isn't based on lifting things. Perhaps dynamic tension exercises would be ideal?), and the cardiovascular effects can be countered with a g-suit while on earth (perhaps supplemented by training with some kind of reverse-g-suit prior to leaving the moon). And in any case once we get to the "ON the moon" phase we're just dealing wih low gravity, not microgravity

Those things do help, but so far there is no method to stop the health effects from progressing consistently - you can at most slow it down to a degree. All astronauts coming back from ISS cannot even walk after they arrive on Earth - it takes quite some time to build the muscles back up despite supplementation and regular exercise.

edit: this is also one of the issues concerning any manned mission to Mars, as getting there will take a long time and astronauts will have to be fit enough at the destination to do their work. Mars gravity is smaller than Earth's but still.

[Batcathat]

Would using centrifugal force to fake gravity help with the health problems (assuming the potential issues with it are solved, so it works as in the movies) in any way?

[Lord Torath]

Would using centrifugal force to fake gravity help with the health problems (assuming the potential issues with it are solved, so it works as in the movies) in any way?

I haven't seen any studies to that effect (although I recall hearing about a study where they grew lettuce here on earth in a centrifuge spinning at 1 G - so the lettuce experienced an oscillating force varying from zero Gs to 2 Gs, and the lettuce was 'sturdier' than normally-grown lettuce - this was probably 30+ years ago -and man I feel old again, thanks for that - so I probably have the details wrong), but I expect it should work just fine.

[Radar]

Would using centrifugal force to fake gravity help with the health problems (assuming the potential issues with it are solved, so it works as in the movies) in any way?

If you could spin it well enough to get close to 1 g of imitated gravity yes, it would help a lot. Probably even solve the problem entirely. From the engineering point of view, making such a spaceship might prove to be difficult though as our typical ones are just a small cabin on top of a huge rocket. Building a centrifuge would require it to be much bigger. Might be easier to do with a space station, but it still would require more materials than nowadays solutions as the strain on the structural components would be much higher.

[pendell]

If you could spin it well enough to get close to 1 g of imitated gravity yes, it would help a lot. Probably even solve the problem entirely. From the engineering point of view, making such a spaceship might prove to be difficult though as our typical ones are just a small cabin on top of a huge rocket. Building a centrifuge would require it to be much bigger. Might be easier to do with a space station, but it still would require more materials than nowadays solutions as the strain on the structural components would be much higher.

Actually, in the movie 2001 , the Discovery held a carousel area which spun around the ships axis at earth-gravity. Astronauts reported there for physical therapy and also for any operations that couldn't be done in zero-g. 2010's Alexei Leonov had a carousel for the exact same reason. I would think any long-range manned deep space vessel would require some arrangement very like this. If the astronauts are going to a planetary body with any appreciable gravity they'll need to stay in condition or be unable to explore.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Tyndmyr]

Would using centrifugal force to fake gravity help with the health problems (assuming the potential issues with it are solved, so it works as in the movies) in any way?

We have not yet had a large enough centrifuge for people to live in, so we really don't know for sure. The lettuce experiment is interesting, but human and lettuce are fairly far apart, so we can't be quite sure.

We do believe that the centrifuge would have to be fairly large to prevent severe discomfort from one's head being subject to very different forces than one's feet. A couple hundred feet across at minimum, I should think. One can test this on various carnival rides that spin you around quickly, and there's a number of ways that this can induce nausea in at least some people. Given that in space there's not a lot of places to go to avoid it, probably want to err on the side of caution here.

[gomipile]

Is there a particular reason to expect that 1g is the best acceleration to live in long term for all health indicators? Sure, living at low gravity for a long time will make it hard to come back to Earth, but what if you never intend to return?

Could it be possible that people who live in Moon, Mars, 0.8g, or etc. gravity permanently might have some health tradeoffs that seem attractive vs living permanently on Earth?

[Radar]

Actually, in the movie 2001 , the Discovery held a carousel area which spun around the ships axis at earth-gravity. Astronauts reported there for physical therapy and also for any operations that couldn't be done in zero-g. 2010's Alexei Leonov had a carousel for the exact same reason. I would think any long-range manned deep space vessel would require some arrangement very like this. If the astronauts are going to a planetary body with any appreciable gravity they'll need to stay in condition or be unable to explore.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Indeed it had and that spinning part itself is pretty big, but most likely too small for actual use as Tyndmar pointed out. Aside from the force gradient, there is also the Coriolis effect, which would be very strong in such a centrifuge. Not sure if there is some medical data on how it would affect humans, but I would expect chronic nausea to be a severe problem.

[Peelee]

Is there a particular reason to expect that 1g is the best acceleration to live in long term for all health indicators? Sure, living at low gravity for a long time will make it hard to come back to Earth, but what if you never intend to return?

Could it be possible that people who live in Moon, Mars, 0.8g, or etc. gravity permanently might have some health tradeoffs that seem attractive vs living permanently on Earth?

Millions of years of evolution specifically geared towards being effective in 1g is the best and likely only reason to expect that. I, for one, am very interested in potential experiments for human adaptability to different gravity. I'd love to see that in my lifetime.

[halfeye]

I, for one, am very interested in potential experiments for human adaptability to different gravity. I'd love to see that in my lifetime.

They've been doing that for nearly a century. Or do you mean genetic adaptability?

[Peelee]

They've been doing that for nearly a century. Or do you mean genetic adaptability?

How so?

[halfeye]

How so?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge

The first largescale human centrifuge designed for Aeronautical training was created in Germany in 1933.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-g_training

I sort of suspect that's not what you mean, but if so I don't know what you do mean.

[Peelee]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-g_training

I sort of suspect that's not what you mean, but if so I don't know what you do mean.

No, I don't mean temporary, short-term training. I mean continuous, prolonged, exposure more on the scale of months to years, and the physiological changes that results.