A while back I read a fascinating book called The High Frontier about how we can and should build a society in space. Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin has exactly this as its mission. This got me thinking about a lot of things having to do with the topic, and naturally, I landed on the focus of this podcast, fitness, diet, and medicine. And I was intrigued by the considerations we need in order to make this space society a reality.
Many of the challenges simply (or not so simply) involve infrastructure, for example, ensuring an environment in which we can get the oxygen we need, and dealing with gravity or the lack thereof. And speaking of gravity, reducing the enormous cost of escaping earth’s gravity by manufacturing things in space.
One program studying these issues is The Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH). This is a consortium including NASA’s Human Research Program (which dates back to the Apollo days), Baylor College of Medicine, Cal Tech, and MIT. Their goal is “to produce promising new approaches, treatments, countermeasures or technologies that have practical application to spaceflight.”
Gravity is the most readily apparent difference. We’ve all seen video, real and fictional, of people in space floating around their spaceships. On earth, in a sense, gravity is what kills us. But by fighting against it, we become strong enough to counteract its force. Currently, people living in space do not have gravity. Just as on earth, we lose muscle when we don’t continually do resistance exercise or work of some kind, in space the absence of gravity reduces muscularity, and since the skeletal infrastructure is not needed, our ever-efficient bodies reduce bone mass. To counteract this, astronauts use special gravity-simulation exercise equipment.
In the book The High Frontier which inspired this episode, people live on the inside surfaces of huge rotating cylinders which produce artificial gravity through the centrifugal force caused by rotation. A good visual example of this is in the Amazon science fiction TV show The Expanse, in which the enormous cylindrical space ship Nauvu appears in seasons one and two. In one episode there are mass injuries, and the worst of them have to be transported to the Nauvoo because they need gravity to heal. Back in reality, NASA has already conducted an earth-based study of the effects of centrifuge artificial gravity.
Radiation is another effect of living in space that we don’t face on earth, at least not to the extent we do in space. On earth, we are always protected by the earth’s magnetic field. This field does extend quite far into space, but the exposure increases. This is another one of those things which we must address through infrastructure.
Because of the expense and other problems associated with space travel from earth, medical services must be performed by the astronauts themselves. Of course, as larger communities form in space, medical professionals will no doubt take up residence and practice there as well. Distance from earth also means you can’t just go to the nearest grocery store and pick up some fresh fruits, meat, and vegetables. The High Frontier predicts farming in space. But some foods like beef will become less common because their production is so inefficient.
A lot of research is being done in anticipation of manned flights to and residence on Mars. The trip takes about seven months using the vehicles available today. So whatever supplies are sent there will have to survive for that long as well as the time between flights AND the shelf-life needed. This is an important consideration not only for food but for medicine as well.
Of the psychological effects of being in space, one major aspect is isolation and confinement. As we move toward larger communities and larger spaces, such as the cylindrical environments I have been talking about, this would be less of a concern. But today, living environments must be manufactured on earth, with the attendant high cost of escaping gravity, so they are necessarily small.
There are a lot of fascinating aspects of space flight and a lot of amazing stuff happening right now. Humans have dreamed of being in space for a long time. In addition to NASA, I recommend you look at Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic to see how the idea of space travel and habitation for more people is progressing.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_food
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/tri
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace
https://www.blueorigin.com/
https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Mormons