NASA spacecraft rockets toward Jupiter’s moon Europa

[Stewy]

(10-19-2024, 06:54 PM)Awful Llama Wrote: Say what you want about Gravity, and Neil deGrasse Tyson certainly had issues with its physics and mechanics of space travel, but the debris cascade sequence was harrowing.  A grain of sand traveling at 40,000 mph can be a killer.   Still, I wish we did have the capability for long-range manned flight right now.  Don't know if I can make it all the way to next century.  

There are several problems that need to be overcome:
---Interspace radiation:  The Earth's Magnetic Field keeps most space missions safe from solar radiation.  The several days astronauts spend when going to the moon can cause mutations.  Spending YEARS in space would be a death sentence from the radiation alone.  Currently there is no solution for this.  Mars doesn't help as it has no magnetic field - at all.  So travelers will find no relief on Mars.
---Muscular Atrophy:  Spinning space craft induces gravity.  Interstellar showed a version of this.  They suggested the diameter of the Endeavor would induce 1g at a 30% spin.  In reality it would have been about 1/10th of a G at 30% spin considering the Endeavors size.  This s a big problem obviously because the skeletal muscle including internal organs would deteriorate due to the low gravity.  Mars doesn't help much as it is 1/3 of Earth's Gravity.  Again there is no solution for this currently.
---Oxygen Waste/Balanced Habitats:  Mars inhabitants would have to grow their own food in greenhouse habitats, which would create huge amounts of oxygen, enough to kill humans, so it has to be filtered out and replaced with CO2.  Humans give off CO2, which needs to be filtered out, and balanced with nitrogen (78%) and oxygen.  Nitrogen does not exists in huge quantities on Mars.  Creating self sustaining (because they have to be self sustaining) long term balanced habitats on Mars again has no 
plausible solution.

These are serious issues, on top of the fact that anyone you send is essentially never coming back.  It's Mars or bust.  For all of Elon Musks bravado, he is essentially full of shyt.

p.s. - Long term habitats on the moon share every one of the same issues, except in an emergency it's a lot easier to save/resupply a colony on the moon, vs. Mars.  One thing goes wrong on Mars and that's it.  They're done.