And what of future space exploration? NASA Johnson Space Center’s Robonaut (foreground) is an attempt to send surrogates into space.. Controlled by telemonitor it performs a mock weld while Ames Research Center’s K10 robot assists two EVA crew inspecting a previously welded seam during a test in 2005. (NASA photo, no. 138676).
There is reason to believe that some forms of microbial life might survive the extreme conditions of space. For Homo sapien sapiens, however, the space environment is a remarkably dangerous place. One space life scientist, Vadim Rygalov, remarked that ensuring human life during spaceflight was largely about providing the basics of human physiological needs. From the most critical—meaning that its absence would cause immediate death, to the least critical—these include such constants available here on Earth of atmospheric pressure, breathable oxygen, temperature, drinking water, food, gravitational pull on physical systems, radiation mitigation, and others of a less immediate nature.
As technologies, and knowledge about them, stand at this time, humans are able to venture into space for short periods of less than a year only by supplying all of these needs either by taking everything with them (oxygen, food, air, etc.) or creating them artificially (pressurized vehicles, centrifugal force to substitute for gravity, etc.). Spaceflight would be much easier if humans could go into hibernation during the extremes of spaceflight, as have some microbial life forms.
Resolving these issues has proven difficult but not insurmountable for such basic spaceflight activities as those undertaken during the heroic age of space exploration when the United States and the Soviet Union raced to the Moon. Overcoming the technological hurdles encountered during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were child’s play in comparison to the threat to human life posed by long duration, deep space missions to such places as Mars. Even the most sophisticated of those, the lunar landings of Project Apollo, were relatively short camping trips on an exceptionally close body in the solar system, and like many camping trips undertaken by Americans the astronauts took with them everything they would need to use while there. This approach will continue to work well until the destination is so far away that resupply from Earth becomes highly problematic if not impossible of the length of time to be gone is so great that resupply proves infeasible. There is no question that the U.S. could return to the Moon in a more dynamic and robust version of Apollo; it could also build a research station there and resupply it from Earth while rotating crews and resupplying from Earth on a regular basis.
In this instance, the lunar research station might look something like a more sophisticated and difficult to support version of the Antarctic research stations. A difficult challenge, yes; but certainly it is something that could be accomplished with presently envisioned technologies. The real difficulty is that at the point a lunar research station becomes a colony profound changes to the manner in which humans interact with the environment beyond Earth must take place. Countermeasures for core challenges—gravity, radiation, particulates, and ancillary effects—provide serious challenges for humans engaged in space colonization.
NASA has created a vision of space exploration in which humans would colonize the solar system. Though no concrete plans are underway for a human Mars, several studies have been launched to investigate possibilities for such visits s. This artist’s concept from 1985 depicts hardware which might be involved when humans visits occur. The artist, Pat Rawlings, depicts Pavonis Mons, a large shield volcano on Mars’ equator overlooking the ancient water eroded canyon in which the base is located. Hardware seen here include the Mars explorer, a traverse vehicle, a habitation module, a power module, greenhouses, central base, lightweight crane and trailer, launch and landing facility, water well pumping station, a maintenance garage, tunneling device, water well drilling rig, large dish antennae, mast antenna, even a Mars airplane. (NASA image, no. S85-31477).
One avenue that NASA has pursued, but without overwhelming success, is the technology of closed loop life support systems. A longstanding objective has been to build a spacecraft that could produce air, recycle water, manage waste, maintain humidity, and suppress fires. “Closing the loop” on environmental life support systems is a major technology challenge affecting the progress of human spaceflight and one that has yet to be resolved.
In 1991, environmental scientists began an experiment to test the feasibility of supporting human beings in a closed environmental system. Funded at $150 million by Texas oil magnate Edward Bass, humans at Biosphere 2 in Arizona’s Santa Catalina Mountains near Tuscon sought to test technologies that might be useful for sustaining life on the Moon or Mars. Recreating habitats from around the globe, designers of the three-acre facility provided for the complete recycling of water, food, and waste. Eight humans confined to the biosphere were to produce 80 percent of their own food. Like a spacecraft, the Biosphere leaked slightly, although not as much as NASA’s space shuttle. Fifteen months after sealing in the eight subjects, the designers of Biosphere 2 were obliged to pump oxygen into the facility. Internal restoration processes proved insufficient to hold the oxygen content at its normal atmospheric level of 19 percent. When the level fell to 14.5 percent, for the safety of the occupants designers decided to break the seal.
Biosphere 2’s failure as a self-contained “terrarium” supporting humans on Earth, much less one moving through the near-vacuum of space, was an eye-opener for those pursuing long-duration human spaceflight. After 1994 no further human habitation of the facility was attempted although it has been used for research in crops using the various environments recreated in it. The goal of keeping people alive in an enclosed, self-contained environment whisking through space may be beyond human capabilities for many centuries.
No terrestrial explorers have ever had to contend with the all of the extremes of the space environment in their activities. For all of the other rigors of their environments, even those in quest of the poles have had breathable air, pressures that did not require suits to ensure their lives, and water/ice. Only those engaged in undersea exploration face similar difficulties of survival in such extreme conditions to which Homo sapien sapiens are ill-evolved.
Despite all countervailing pushes and pulls, will humans have to evolve to survive the rigors of the space environment? This possibility, moving as it does away from the necessity of maintaining organic life under Earth-like conditions throughout the cosmos, offers a fascinating option for space travel. If we did not require Earth-like conditions to survive, our ability to colonize strikingly diverse non-Earth-like worlds would expand. Many spheres, including those within the local solar system not currently suitable for human occupation, might prove acceptable. Is it possible that should cyborgs emerge—and undertake space travel—they may well shoulder the burden of carrying the essence of humanity to other worlds?
Uh…. we humans are animals, right? We’ve evolved to fit into a particular environment. We need temperatures of say 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit to be comfortable, we need a certain amount of moisture in the air, we need reliable sources of food and traces of minerals and chemicals (“vitamins”), and so on and so on. Can’t live without ‘em!
So we all should live in a smallish region of central Africa. There’s no where we really fit. And yet, rather obviously, we’ve spread further, using expensive “un-natural” means. We wear clothes, we build houses, we cook foods that would otherwise be unpalatable on stoves and store stuff in refrigerators, we builld water treatment plants and install air conditioning, we fund an Environmental Protection Agency which bosses industries around …. Sure, we take this for granted, but it’s completely unnatural by the standards of other animals — in fact most of this is unimaginable in the context of human society of a few thousand years ago.
So I don’t think the argument that Space is forever barred to human beings because of its rigors actually makes much sense. Take a look at some of those Antarctic research stations — people live in them year round these days and have websites! — and remember that barely a century explorers like Scott and Shackleton struggled to survive in those conditions (and sometimes didn’t). We actually do have reasonable notions of how to make habital environments in space, even if we’re still fiddling about the details. It’s funding that limits us, not the Inviolable laws of nature. And when we learn to do it right, we will have learned how to do it and will replicate that experience across the solar system — it’s not as if we have to start from complete scratch on each and every planet, any more than we have had to do on Earth when reaching new continents.
I think the point is what environments can naturally support humans. Space cannot. No where, no how. Antarctica cannot, and does not. The people working at the South Pole could not exist there without regular and intensive support from warmer climes. If the colonizers of America were to have been dumped on those shores with little more than the clothes on their backs (or perhaps even without them!), they WOULD have been able to survive, and perhaps even thrive.
No one is saying that space is forever barred to humans. But what is being said, I think, it that the blithe comparison of, say, New World exploration to human space exploration is simply fallacious. Living in space or on other worlds isn’t just about closed loop life support, but perhaps reaching for life support with no supplies from the home planet. That’s a big job. A lot bigger job than for the New World colonists. Our notions about creating such environments in space are perhaps “reasonable”, but we’re a long way away from “fiddling with the details” if we’re talking about self-sufficiency.
Doug — I do see your point, but your notion of how habitable the New World was for Europeans is probably in error. In the century after Columbus, likely two out of three Old World immigrants died in the Americas within 3 years of arrival — most in the first year. There were a lot of native diseases to which Europeans had no immunities — syphillis being the most famous — and notions of disease prevention in the 16th century were pretty primitive. Also the newcomers had no real idea of what native plants and animals were edible and which weren’t, and — generally — no interest in learning such details. They were Conquistadors, not peons!
Further north, the English had better success partially because they came with the idea of settling and took easily to house building and local agriculture (once the Indians taught them what to grow), but even so the death rate was high. One of the reasons slavery became so establlished in the future USA was the very high death rate among indentured servants from Europe — Africans were expected to be hardier. And until it was too late, they had no idea of the rigors of North American winters.
IOW, the Americas provided a very harsh environment for newcomers. Not quite as bad as Mars or Venus for unclad astronauts, but pretty bad. On balance, our colonists would start with some advantages.
These are good points to remember, but we’re talking about some unprepared colonists dying within several years, as opposed to all dying instantaneously. There is really no comparison. I just think that using historical terrestrial exploration as any kind of a template for space exploration is stretching things a lot. Roger’s point is that space is an environment that is fundamentally not survivable to humans without complicated, and even heroic measures. It’s a different game.
As to learning about which native plants and animals are edible, that’s something that humans learn pretty quickly, probably by getting sick, though may cause a few deaths. Won’t take long for lunar and Mars colonists to learn which native plants and animals are edible. In fact, the lack of any to experiment with will probably doom most to eventual starvation, without a well established supply chain to Earth. They can ISRU themselves until they’re blue in the face, but they’ll still starve, unless perhaps they have an absolutely huge greenhouse. Historical terrestrial explorers could survive without a supply chain. Space explorers would almost certainly not.
You think that the first colonists of Mars would be “peons”? Very, very unlikely. Were there native species or cultures to dominate, they would certainly be conquistadors, and their countries would have spent billions of dollars on each of them.
Doug — I do believe you’re misreading me.
I’m not arguing the colonists of Mars would be peons, The thought is that Spaniards coming to the new world didn’t as a rule view themselves as “colonists” — they were soldiers who might hope to rise in the Spanish aristocracy if successful, rather than peasants who scratched the earth for a living. With that kind of attitude, it isn’t a surprise that they adapted poorly to a new environment.
As for the more enlightened folk to the north … as late as Thomas Jefferson’s administrations, the homely American tomato was commonly called a “love apple” and considered poisonous. That’s after two centuries of English colonization. It strikes you the colonists learned quickly? We have different definitions of “quick.”
Let’s go back to the beginning. Roger’s thought was (I use your words) “space is an environment that is fundamentally not survivable to humans without complicated, and even heroic measures.” I’ve not argued otherwise. My point is that human expansion on Earth also required complicated and heroic measures (I mean, why else would anyone but idiots think it noteworthy?), and that the technologies required for planetary colonization are not wildly out of line in comparative terms.
I think what this boils down to, my gut impression is we could colonize Mars successfully by the end of this century — faster if we really worked at it — and you seem to think that’s either thousands of years away, or even more likely that no one is ever going to colonize Mars because the effort doesn’t look rewarding no matter what our level of technology,
Hmmm?