4 ms·

Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. Is there a "fast fix" for treating anemia? Because if humans do get there and land o

by eps 5y ago

Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. Is there a "fast fix" for treating anemia? Because if humans do get there and land on a surface, this will probably be required.

bena 5y ago
Anemia isn't a disease in and of itself, it's a symptom of something else. You don't treat anemia, you treat what's causing the anemia. From reading the article, we don't know why it's happening. So we don't know how to treat it yet.
lapetitejort 5y ago
Anemia is just one of a myriad of problems humans would face on a Mars trip. My chief concern, and the one that's probably hardest to tease out, would be the psychological stress. There's no escape pod, no truncated emergency schedule, no one to greet you on the other end, and potentially not enough work to keep you busy. These conditions are hard if not impossible to replicate on earth.
- skulk 5y ago
  If stress is such a problem, then why not just sedate the passenger? Some forms of sedation can be quickly reversed as a last-ditch effort if there's a problem that the computer/mission control absolutely cannot solve.
  - 420official 5y ago
    Astronauts on the space station work out nearly every day for several hours to stave off atrophy and still have issues. Leaving someone sedated for months in a zero G environment would make the atrophy far worse.
- _tom_ 5y ago
  > These conditions are hard if not impossible to replicate on earth Really? Where have you been for the last two years? On the other hand, it does fully supports your hypothesis that the psychological stress will be huge.
  - lapetitejort 5y ago
    The majority of people who had prepared for the 2020 snap study elected to drop out after only a few weeks. Science, and humanity as a whole, are worse off as a result.
  - RavingGoat 5y ago
    It seems like death row inmates would be a good comparison group.
  - kortex 5y ago
    Even at the height of Covid, I was still bundling up in PPE and going to the grocery store. Not to mention all the outside things to do. Even the biosphere-style experiments, there's always the subconscious knowledge that you can make a call and bail at any time. That's very different than knowing you have no lifeline. Les Stroud from Survivorman talks about how on one of his stints, he tested the emergency walkie/satellite phone or whatever and got nothing. So he's got some idea. There are people out there who can do it, but it takes a special breed. So yeah, take Covid stress, and like turn it up to 11.
- supperburg 5y ago
  It’s not a problem at all. Some people are predisposed to turning psychological stress into a psychiatric pathology but there is nothing intrinsic about stress or space travel that causes psychiatric problems. People on death row meet your criteria and probably endure more stress and a lot of them don’t develop psychiatric disease.
Tuna-Fish 5y ago
> Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the idealized Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes ~8.6 months, but reality is both a lot more messy and more amenable to optimization. Just to take this year's launch window as an example: The absolute lowest launch Δv trajectory is about 390 days, at 3.73km/s. This is obviously unworkable. However, if you limit yourself to the lower, faster half of the porkchop plot, you'll find that the lowest Δv trajectory is ~200 days, at 4.3km/s. If you are willing to spend 5km/s, you can bring the trip time down to ~150 days. And if you have a fully retanked starship in orbit (assumptions: 250t mass at burnout including payload and landing fuel, 1200t tanks, 365s average Isp. These are very conservative, and will probably all be improved upon before any trip to mars is realistic.), which nets you 5615m/s, you can push that down to 130 days.
JamesBarney 5y ago
EPO is a medication that increases the number of red blood cells.

by eps 5y ago

bena 5y ago

Anemia isn't a disease in and of itself, it's a symptom of something else. You don't treat anemia, you treat what's causing the anemia. From reading the article, we don't know why it's happening. So we don't know how to treat it yet.

lapetitejort 5y ago

Anemia is just one of a myriad of problems humans would face on a Mars trip. My chief concern, and the one that's probably hardest to tease out, would be the psychological stress. There's no escape pod, no truncated emergency schedule, no one to greet you on the other end, and potentially not enough work to keep you busy. These conditions are hard if not impossible to replicate on earth.

skulk 5y ago
If stress is such a problem, then why not just sedate the passenger? Some forms of sedation can be quickly reversed as a last-ditch effort if there's a problem that the computer/mission control absolutely cannot solve.
- 420official 5y ago
  Astronauts on the space station work out nearly every day for several hours to stave off atrophy and still have issues. Leaving someone sedated for months in a zero G environment would make the atrophy far worse.
_tom_ 5y ago
> These conditions are hard if not impossible to replicate on earth Really? Where have you been for the last two years? On the other hand, it does fully supports your hypothesis that the psychological stress will be huge.
- lapetitejort 5y ago
  The majority of people who had prepared for the 2020 snap study elected to drop out after only a few weeks. Science, and humanity as a whole, are worse off as a result.
- RavingGoat 5y ago
  It seems like death row inmates would be a good comparison group.
- kortex 5y ago
  Even at the height of Covid, I was still bundling up in PPE and going to the grocery store. Not to mention all the outside things to do. Even the biosphere-style experiments, there's always the subconscious knowledge that you can make a call and bail at any time. That's very different than knowing you have no lifeline. Les Stroud from Survivorman talks about how on one of his stints, he tested the emergency walkie/satellite phone or whatever and got nothing. So he's got some idea. There are people out there who can do it, but it takes a special breed. So yeah, take Covid stress, and like turn it up to 11.
supperburg 5y ago
It’s not a problem at all. Some people are predisposed to turning psychological stress into a psychiatric pathology but there is nothing intrinsic about stress or space travel that causes psychiatric problems. People on death row meet your criteria and probably endure more stress and a lot of them don’t develop psychiatric disease.

Tuna-Fish 5y ago

> Kinda puts 9 months needed to get to Mars into an interesting perspective. It doesn't take 9 months to go to Mars. It's true that the idealized Hohmann trajectory to Mars takes ~8.6 months, but reality is both a lot more messy and more amenable to optimization. Just to take this year's launch window as an example: The absolute lowest launch Δv trajectory is about 390 days, at 3.73km/s. This is obviously unworkable. However, if you limit yourself to the lower, faster half of the porkchop plot, you'll find that the lowest Δv trajectory is ~200 days, at 4.3km/s. If you are willing to spend 5km/s, you can bring the trip time down to ~150 days. And if you have a fully retanked starship in orbit (assumptions: 250t mass at burnout including payload and landing fuel, 1200t tanks, 365s average Isp. These are very conservative, and will probably all be improved upon before any trip to mars is realistic.), which nets you 5615m/s, you can push that down to 130 days.

JamesBarney 5y ago

EPO is a medication that increases the number of red blood cells.