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The problem is the ISS wasn't the first station and we already knew zero-g fucks people up long before the ISS was built. Building the ISS anyway so we can was

The problem is the ISS wasn't the first station and we already knew zero-g fucks people up long before the ISS was built. Building the ISS anyway so we can waste more time studying the minutia of exactly how badly and quickly it fucks people up was a mistake. In truth the ISS exists for political reasons, not because it was a sound investment from a science and research perspective.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
Congratulations, your alternate history has delayed Mars colonization by several decades. Because of the ISS we know that stays of greater than 12 months in zero gravity have real but minor impacts on the human body. So 3-4 month trips to Mars in zero-g are feasible. If we assume they aren't, those trips would be far more resource intensive.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  We didn't learn any of that from the ISS which we didn't already know from Salyut 6 and 7, and Mir. The ISS, aka Mir 2, hasn't taught us anything new. The reason it exists is because decades ago, for a few years, manned space stations made sense for orbital reconnaissance because putting unmanned cameras in space was complicated. Salyut and MOL were born from this transient strategic necessity. Unmanned recon satellites soon became practical though, so MOL was canceled but the Soviets carried on with Salyut because if there was anything they were good at, it was continuing to make something long after anybody else would have canceled it. Even when they did get recon satellites they did it with Vostok capsules, they never stopped making those after launching Yuri Gragarin in one. They just kept on making them because they were already tooled up for it, finding new excuses to keep making the same old stuff. And so it was with Salyut, the program was obsolete for orbital reconnaissance but they were already making them so they kept at it, turning it into a national prestige program. Mir was a direct descendant of it, built around the DOS-7 module which was a Salyut module with 6 docking ports instead of the two on DOS-6. It never had a good reason for existing besides Soviet politics. (By the way, Skylab never had a good reason for existing either, just politics. NASA trying to hold onto their funding as Apollo was wound down.) The ISS is nothing more than Mir 2, built around the DOS-8 module, it's a Salyut with American funding because this time America wanted to keep the Russian space program solvent to make it harder for Iran/etc to recruit that Soviet talent. And because NASA likes long term projects that require around the clock staffing because that's great for budgets and careers. That's why the ISS exists. Also we aren't going to Mars. Sorry. A lot of individuals are passionate about that but at an organization level there is no drive for it. NASA likes to use the talk of it for fundraising but never makes progress on it and Congress won't ever greenlight it, and SpaceX uses it to keep their employee moral up but all they are demonstrably working towards is being the king of launching satellites. The only money to be made in space is with stuff pointed at Earth. There is no economic case for Mars colonization. It's not happening. I wish it weren't so because I'm a sci-fi junky, but it is what it is.
  - avmich 1y ago
    > We didn't learn any of that from the ISS which we didn't already know from Salyut 6 and 7, and Mir. The ISS, aka Mir 2, hasn't taught us anything new. I doubt that. ISS served in space longer than Mir and Salyut-7 combined, I would expect it to run more experiments and get more data - especially as the equipment is more modern and experiments are planned with the benefit of knowledge of the previous works.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      The amount of time the station spends in orbit isn't relevant, the amount of time a person spends in orbit for an unbroken stretch is what's relevant. Three of the top five spaceflight duration records were set on Mir, including the top two (437 days and 379 days.) Nobody even thinks of getting close to that top Mir record anymore because it is already known that it fucks people up.
      - avmich 1y ago
        > The amount of time the station spends in orbit isn't relevant, The people on ISS were doing a multitude of scientific programs during that long time. That's important. Just like you wouldn't say that Hubble already seen everything and JWST isn't needed.
      - notahacker 1y ago
        There are microgravity experiments run in the ISS other than "how much does microgravity atrophy the human body?"
- lupusreal 1y ago
  And another thing: We still have no idea what long term stays in Martian or even Lunar gravity does to a human body. We don't know because we have spent the past half a century fucking around with useless zero-g space stations instead of building von Braun wheels which could easily be used to simulate those conditions. Because forget about Mars colonization, merely finding the political willpower to do something as conceptually simple as spinning in space is evidently impossible for us.
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    The simulation would be flawed. Von Braun wheels would have very significant Coriolis effects, so it'd be hard to distinguish whether any issues are due to reduced gravity or the Coriolis effects.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      Bone density and muscle loss effects shouldn't be significantly effected by coriolis effects. Such effects may likely cause nausea in many people, but it is very likely that test subjects who can adapt to it and live comfortably during the period of study could be found.
    - PlunderBunny 1y ago
      My very rusty physics tells me that walking one way along the inside of the wheel would make you weigh less, and the other way would make you weigh more - is this what you're referring to? Would trying to work 'normally' in this kind of situation induce nausea, or make your food fall off your tray etc? It would be a shame if you went to all the effort to make a Von Braun wheel in space to simulate gravity, only to find that you had to stand still to do anything practical. (I assume the astronauts in 2001 A Space Odyssey jogged in the direction that made themselves weigh more, to make their workout more intense.)
      - Hemospectrum 1y ago
        Coriolis forces acting on the human vestibular system can directly induce motion sickness just from turning your head. If it turns out humans cannot acclimate through long term exposure, the only remedy is to increase the wheel radius.

bryanlarsen 1y ago

Congratulations, your alternate history has delayed Mars colonization by several decades. Because of the ISS we know that stays of greater than 12 months in zero gravity have real but minor impacts on the human body. So 3-4 month trips to Mars in zero-g are feasible. If we assume they aren't, those trips would be far more resource intensive.

lupusreal 1y ago
We didn't learn any of that from the ISS which we didn't already know from Salyut 6 and 7, and Mir. The ISS, aka Mir 2, hasn't taught us anything new. The reason it exists is because decades ago, for a few years, manned space stations made sense for orbital reconnaissance because putting unmanned cameras in space was complicated. Salyut and MOL were born from this transient strategic necessity. Unmanned recon satellites soon became practical though, so MOL was canceled but the Soviets carried on with Salyut because if there was anything they were good at, it was continuing to make something long after anybody else would have canceled it. Even when they did get recon satellites they did it with Vostok capsules, they never stopped making those after launching Yuri Gragarin in one. They just kept on making them because they were already tooled up for it, finding new excuses to keep making the same old stuff. And so it was with Salyut, the program was obsolete for orbital reconnaissance but they were already making them so they kept at it, turning it into a national prestige program. Mir was a direct descendant of it, built around the DOS-7 module which was a Salyut module with 6 docking ports instead of the two on DOS-6. It never had a good reason for existing besides Soviet politics. (By the way, Skylab never had a good reason for existing either, just politics. NASA trying to hold onto their funding as Apollo was wound down.) The ISS is nothing more than Mir 2, built around the DOS-8 module, it's a Salyut with American funding because this time America wanted to keep the Russian space program solvent to make it harder for Iran/etc to recruit that Soviet talent. And because NASA likes long term projects that require around the clock staffing because that's great for budgets and careers. That's why the ISS exists. Also we aren't going to Mars. Sorry. A lot of individuals are passionate about that but at an organization level there is no drive for it. NASA likes to use the talk of it for fundraising but never makes progress on it and Congress won't ever greenlight it, and SpaceX uses it to keep their employee moral up but all they are demonstrably working towards is being the king of launching satellites. The only money to be made in space is with stuff pointed at Earth. There is no economic case for Mars colonization. It's not happening. I wish it weren't so because I'm a sci-fi junky, but it is what it is.
- avmich 1y ago
  > We didn't learn any of that from the ISS which we didn't already know from Salyut 6 and 7, and Mir. The ISS, aka Mir 2, hasn't taught us anything new. I doubt that. ISS served in space longer than Mir and Salyut-7 combined, I would expect it to run more experiments and get more data - especially as the equipment is more modern and experiments are planned with the benefit of knowledge of the previous works.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    The amount of time the station spends in orbit isn't relevant, the amount of time a person spends in orbit for an unbroken stretch is what's relevant. Three of the top five spaceflight duration records were set on Mir, including the top two (437 days and 379 days.) Nobody even thinks of getting close to that top Mir record anymore because it is already known that it fucks people up.
    - avmich 1y ago
      > The amount of time the station spends in orbit isn't relevant, The people on ISS were doing a multitude of scientific programs during that long time. That's important. Just like you wouldn't say that Hubble already seen everything and JWST isn't needed.
    - notahacker 1y ago
      There are microgravity experiments run in the ISS other than "how much does microgravity atrophy the human body?"
lupusreal 1y ago
And another thing: We still have no idea what long term stays in Martian or even Lunar gravity does to a human body. We don't know because we have spent the past half a century fucking around with useless zero-g space stations instead of building von Braun wheels which could easily be used to simulate those conditions. Because forget about Mars colonization, merely finding the political willpower to do something as conceptually simple as spinning in space is evidently impossible for us.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  The simulation would be flawed. Von Braun wheels would have very significant Coriolis effects, so it'd be hard to distinguish whether any issues are due to reduced gravity or the Coriolis effects.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Bone density and muscle loss effects shouldn't be significantly effected by coriolis effects. Such effects may likely cause nausea in many people, but it is very likely that test subjects who can adapt to it and live comfortably during the period of study could be found.
  - PlunderBunny 1y ago
    My very rusty physics tells me that walking one way along the inside of the wheel would make you weigh less, and the other way would make you weigh more - is this what you're referring to? Would trying to work 'normally' in this kind of situation induce nausea, or make your food fall off your tray etc? It would be a shame if you went to all the effort to make a Von Braun wheel in space to simulate gravity, only to find that you had to stand still to do anything practical. (I assume the astronauts in 2001 A Space Odyssey jogged in the direction that made themselves weigh more, to make their workout more intense.)
    - Hemospectrum 1y ago
      Coriolis forces acting on the human vestibular system can directly induce motion sickness just from turning your head. If it turns out humans cannot acclimate through long term exposure, the only remedy is to increase the wheel radius.