2 ms·

I actually did the math on the Mars problem a little while ago. It wouldn't be that hard to build a big circular railway on Mars that would let the cars experie

I actually did the math on the Mars problem a little while ago. It wouldn't be that hard to build a big circular railway on Mars that would let the cars experience 1G. (Maybe a few hundred meters diameter?) Think giant luxury Gravitron. You'd stop the train every few days to allow for resupply and entry or exit. It'd certainly be a different society in which pregnant women were expected to sequester themselves in high-G trains for the duration of their pregnancies, but there's no law of nature stopping this approach working. Also, we don't know the shape of the function mapping deformity to gravity. We just have two endpoints: 1g, normal; 0g, deformed. Maybe 0.2g is sufficient to reduce deformities below the noise floor? We need to get a sense of the shape of this curve, preferably using mammal models.

cubefox 2y ago
Unfortunately deformities might not just develop during pregnancy but during the entirety of childhood. Even if the risk is gone after birth, building countless circular railways could be too expensive, or unappealing to women who may prefer not to have children over using this thing for several months. The point about the function of gravity and deformity is valid. More realistically, both gravity and mass of the organism are likely to influence deformities, since animals with larger mass are impacted more by gravity.
intended 2y ago
Dust will end it. Friction from fine particles and abrasion. The train and tracks would have to be shielded. But if you have that, you can make the whole team work on the train. It looks like we will be sending robots to mars for decades. Drilling out habitats before we can move people. Or maybe dynamiting out caves to build habitats.