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On the devastating effects of a year in space

brisbanetimes.com.au

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Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#91

Post by nindalf »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #81
joering2 wrote: post #56

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.

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.

> Everyone complains

Anecdotal evidence is worthless. Perhaps you could contribute something more substantive than this because it leads the conversation in an unproductive direction - "oh I live in the UK and everyone I speak to loves the NHS"

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#92

Post by WillReplyfFood »

valuearb wrote: post #84
QAPereo wrote: 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.

The same NASA who subsidized private contractors, so they could reach this price with equipment, science and funds?

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#93

Post by pjc50 »

nindalf wrote: post #91
toomanybeersies wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Everyone complains Anecdotal evidence is worthless. Perhaps you could contribute something more substantive than this because it leads the conversation in an unproductive direction - "oh I live in the UK and everyone I speak to loves the NHS"

.. but they also complain about it. Expressing affection by bickering is very British.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#94

Post by RSchaeffer »

everyone wrote: post #60

Astronauts always seem to be these clean-cut godfearing family-men types. Maybe antisocial misanthropic weirdos would be better suited. From a psychological perspective. They wouldnt miss family/friends, and might enjoy living on spacefood.

Peter Watts has an interesting take on this in his book Starfish.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#95

Post by have_faith »

WillReplyfFood wrote: post #89
astrodust wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Then the penalty cost will be weighed against the cost of covering a procedure. You can't cure lack of empathy.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#96

Post by clappski »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #81
joering2 wrote: post #56

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.

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.

Everyone in the UK complains about the way the goverment run/fund the NHS, and the majority of the issues people have with the service are due to bad outsourcing choices or services affected by funding cuts. It's a big distinction.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#97

Post by agumonkey »

_ph_ wrote: post #51

This is why people like Scott Kelly should be considered heroes. They are pushing our knowledge about manned spaceflight, and doing to at considerable personal risk and effort. But as a result, we are getting more knowledgeable about the problems, and hopefully solution approaches. That stays on the ISS of 6 months or even a year are somewhat a routine is quite an achievement. And we might find out, how to do even lo…

I still wonder if Musk considered effect of months in space on the average person.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#98

Post by jacquesm »

yorwba wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #27

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.

Coriolis forces will make this non-feasible. You'd need to do much better than that.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#99

Post by vertex-four »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #81
joering2 wrote: post #56

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.

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.

Yes, people complain, but in New Zealand and much of Europe you can get your healthcare eventually. Maybe not always to world-best standards (although more often than right-wing newspapers would like to suggest), but good enough.

In the US, there are people who can't access healthcare at all - not because there's not enough providers, but simply because they don't have enough money. There's insurance plans that will cover very little unless you have a car crash, due to very high deductibles - much of America is on these.

Re: On the devastating effects of a year in space

#100

Post by dsfyu404ed »

neurotech1 wrote: post #39
simplicio wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, especially given much of the purpose of his flight was to examine the effects of that long in space. I have trouble believing that NASA didn't, if nothing else, give him a phone # to call right away if he had any unexpected symptoms. The whole "should I go to the emergency room" thing kinda seems like a narrative added after the fact to add excitement to his article/book. (not that I doubt the episode was scary,…

They have on-call flight surgeon(physicians) for the Astronaut Office. This includes post-mission support. The narrative seems like it was slightly dramatic to support the story. Similar "unusual" symptoms have occurred on previous missions with other astronauts. Also, being a senior astronaut, he is likely personal friends with at least one of the assigned flight surgeon.

He's probably picked up a heck of a lot of expertise on basic medical stuff over the years so he can almost be his own CNA.

They probably decided that having him at home in a normal environment with a fitbit or something logging his heart rate and whatnot was better than having him in an unfamiliar hospital.

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