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On the devastating effects of a year in space

brisbanetimes.com.au

81–90 of 135 posts

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#81
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're making a joke, but what you're saying is not at all true. Most people in the US have quite good healthcare. That's why it's so hard to change anything.

Say what? I cannot find a single friend or family member who wouldn't be complaining at the healthcare; and those who are healthy just complain how high deductibles are in case they got sick. Have you ever been to Europe? Some west-block countries like Germany? Same wait time for private sector only at the 10% cost surgeries, xrays you name it, with the same equipment that USA is using in most cases.

Everyone complains about healthcare. It's a universal thing.

In New Zealand, everyone complains about healthcare, even though hospital care is free and doctors visits are really cheap. Everyone in the UK complains about the NHS, people in Canada complain about wait times at hospitals.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#82
post #3

Based on the experience of cosmonauts who spent long periods of time on various Mir missions in the 1980s and 1990s, what is the long-term impact of staying in zero-gravity space for so long? If they lost bone mass, the walls of their hearts became thinner, and they received the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays daily over hundreds of days in space, are they experiencing debilitating effects 20 or 30 years later?

Well apparently long term spaceflight has permanent negative effects on your vision: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experime...

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#83
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero-G also makes people sick, but astronauts can get used to it. If you put someone in a small spinning station for six months, would they also get used to the motion sickness? What if you found someone suffering from (and that had learned to live with) permanent vertigo?

Shouldn't motion sickness only happen when you have a reference frame? i.e., if you're on the space station you shouldn't be able to tell when it's spinning?

Only for non-inertial reference frames. If the station were rotating, it would therefore be accelerating, and you would be able to feel it.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#84
post #5

...And this is why Mars for colonists is still very much a turgid fantasy. We need to dream less, and commit more to the hard and expensive org of solving these problems. Step 1: stop stripping NASA down to bare metal. Here’s some possible insight into the impact of radiation on their brains: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/05/space-radiation-may-d... this is in addition to bones, muscles, eyes, etc. Edit: the pr…

Stripping NASA down to bare metal? The same NASA that’s spending over $2B a launch to build the SLS, when they could buy the same capacity from private launch companies at less than 1/10th the cost?

And radiation is not a significant threat, we will have hundreds if not thousands of qualified astronauts fighting over being one of the first to take the relatively minor radiation risks to be the first to go.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#85
The first three paragraphs sound like he is a PTSD victim from a forgotten war. The next seven, like a nerve gas victim. With all this in mind.

This si more than a red flag for space travel, more has to be done before we even consider establishing a base anywhere off-world. Till then, probes and asteroid mining seem more profitable, safe and mind expanding.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#86
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ISS is simply too small for that. It would have to spin at a ridiculous rate in order to get to a level of gravity where the effects are no longer felt. And in this particular case that is actually a blessing because even if the space station would be able to do this the spaceship used for any interplanetary traveling would not and so no useful data for such a trip would be collected.

Since the centrifugal force for mass m, angular velocity w and radius r is mw²r, you only need w = sqrt(g/r) to reproduce Earth-like levels of acceleration. At r = 10 m, that's already less than 1 rad/s or 1/6 cycle/s. That doesn't seem ridiculously fast. And why wouldn't an interplanetary spaceship be able to spin fast enough? You could just build it as a space station with thrusters.

I think the problem is the difference of g between r and r-1.75 (the height of a human standing up).

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#87
post #3

Based on the experience of cosmonauts who spent long periods of time on various Mir missions in the 1980s and 1990s, what is the long-term impact of staying in zero-gravity space for so long? If they lost bone mass, the walls of their hearts became thinner, and they received the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays daily over hundreds of days in space, are they experiencing debilitating effects 20 or 30 years later?

Given that lack of gravity seems to be a major risk factor for well-being I'm surprised a static structure like the ISS doesn't yet have a rotating centrifuge-like structure ala 2001: A Space Oddysey to at least ward off the effects during sleep and downtime

I love that movie. The bone-space montage is so good.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#88
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only possible, it's typically less expensive on a per-capita basis than what the US is doing now. The system isn't perfect here, some people fall through the cracks or live so far away from a doctor that they can't get the care they need, but anyone that's able to see a doctor or visit a hospital will get the same treatment as anyone else who can. I don't think you realize how much money is lost in the black…

The quality of care must go down for some, right? It's not possible to a) keep the same existing standard of care for all, b) maintain prices, or c) keep the same level of profit for the industry. Something has to give. If [a] and [b] are true, then profits will be lower, and therefore quality will suffer next.

Without debating around the edges (because yes,in practice there is almost always someone winning and someone losing), a market model only works if profit is a function of a sufficiently competitive market, and not other structural, cultural, or political factors and barriers working against that outcome. And your implied equivalency largely ignores those factors present in the US.

Indeed, the theory that a competitive market can actually deliver socially efficient outcomes could almost be said to be predicated on the idea that yes, you can push down profits substantially without quality deteriorating, because market outcomes are not driven just by profit making motives on the producers' side, but also competitive and structural considerations that determine the nature of competition and consumer demand, competition, and substitutions in that market.

So if the US healthcare system generally delivers worse outcomes and costs more (and that's something I generally take to be true), I think it would be a mistake to come at it from a simplistic point of view of an efficient market already operating and saying that any cut would worsen outcomes, because your opponents position is not predicated on the US health care system being a competitive market. Indeed, we need to take into consideration all the other structural qualities driving healthcare delivery and outcomes in the US market. And compared to most other countries, these differences are usually quite substantial: everything from your political process, to where and how health care is typically purchased and received, how your insurance market works, to your social security and labour laws.

There is nothing, in even basic neoclassical economic theory, that implies a market is optimal, in either supply quantity or quality, by maximising producer profits or surplus.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what? I cannot find a single friend or family member who wouldn't be complaining at the healthcare; and those who are healthy just complain how high deductibles are in case they got sick. Have you ever been to Europe? Some west-block countries like Germany? Same wait time for private sector only at the 10% cost surgeries, xrays you name it, with the same equipment that USA is using in most cases.

I've had relatives that have had quadruple bypass surgery here (Canada) and had to fill out more paperwork when applying for a library card than when checking out of the hospital. I've also had American relatives that could not, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how many times they called, begged and peaded with their insurance company, to get the treatment they desperately needed. It's like those companies wo…

There should be a early death or inusry due to slow processing, a penalty payment..

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to make it "big enough" is to put a weight on the end of a long cable, and spin the combination. It wouldn't need to be a full g either, some should be a lot better than nothing. With a cable, though, there might be weird problems with oscillations.

Yea, I think tethers in space are still considered quite tricky.

One alternative is to replace the cable with a rigid tube, and then have living quarters at both ends. The tube is big enough for an astronaut to pass through. Sort of a one spoke section of a spoked wheel.
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