11–17 of 17 posts
The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.
As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc. The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towa…
"Budget."
(or, at least, this is what I imagine the answer is.)
> It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towards the difficulties and solutions of space exploration.
Apollo had some major issues with moon dust and such - maintaining a sterile environment is a different, if overlapping skillset with maintaining an environment within a vacuum.
That said, there's all the NBC preparedness of the military, and e.g. the medical response to outbreaks and quarantines - even if "don't enter the quarantined area" is rule 1.
But hey, maybe Robots could be an option at some point. Still - do you fund the expedition that requires expensive, custom, bespoke explorer-bots (because there hasn't been much of a market for those for mass production to drive down costs or standardize things) or do you fund the expedition where you can send a few students for school credit?
As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc. The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towa…
Now this is how you write a headline. A bit more on the disease here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmania... I'm actually a bit surprised that they did not suspect leishmaniasis earlier; it's not an unusual affliction for Mesosamerican deep jungle regions.
I read: "Preston told CBS News that months after leaving the jungle, he noticed a bug bite that simply wouldn’t go away. And so did half his team members. Eventually, the National Institutes of Health diagnosed them with Leishmaniasis — a rare parasitic disease — and the team was forced to undergo treatment" So I looked at wikipedia, and the article [1] there says: "About 12 million people are currently infected in s…
> Leishmaniasis is mostly a disease of the developing world, and is rarely known in the developed world outside a small number of cases
So, not rare for where they visited, but rare for where they live (and where the diagnosis happened).
As a layman, I'm not clear on why we don't treat such sites like alien worlds and come prepared with environmental suits for the jungle, special habitats and vehicles, etc. The article says the explorers don't believe it's practical to make the journey - but aren't they operating from a paradigm which is on a continuum from weekend camping trips? It seems past time to treat Earth's inhospitable zones with an eye towa…
An aside, but reading the accounts of the medical treatment the explorers had to endure after is a reminder of how ineffective modern medicine is, or at least how much further we have yet to go: They literally were taking poison and hoping that they would outlive the parasite under those conditions. In the case where a parasite might be hiding anywhere in your body this is probably still the only thing you can really…
The more something is like ourselves, the harder it is to attack it with chemicals. Our cells are very similar in nature to a lot of protozoan parasites, so the drugs that may treat them are pretty toxic to ourselves. Bacteria and fungi are much less like our cells, and they have a lot of unique features such as peptidoglycan or ergosterol in the cell wall, therefore they can be attacked with chemicals that are less…
Chemo is poison that effects cancer cells slightly more severely then healthy cells.
Now this is how you write a headline. A bit more on the disease here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151019-leishmania... I'm actually a bit surprised that they did not suspect leishmaniasis earlier; it's not an unusual affliction for Mesosamerican deep jungle regions.
I read: "Preston told CBS News that months after leaving the jungle, he noticed a bug bite that simply wouldn’t go away. And so did half his team members. Eventually, the National Institutes of Health diagnosed them with Leishmaniasis — a rare parasitic disease — and the team was forced to undergo treatment" So I looked at wikipedia, and the article [1] there says: "About 12 million people are currently infected in s…