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/sci/ - Science & Math

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6348603 No.6348603 [Reply] [Original]

Let's imagine we have colonized Mars. What effects would the 38% earth gravity have on our bodies? What would this mean for a baby conceived and born on Mars?

Are there any terms I can google all I can find is articles about the human body in zero gravity.

>> No.6348607

Would bone density be considerably less? Does that mean a child born on Mars wouldn't be able to visit Earth?

>> No.6348608

>>6348603
Why are you under the assumption that if we colonized Mars, we'd be living under the same gravity conditions given to us? Hopefully we could simulate gravity by then.

>> No.6348612

>>6348608
I don't think that's reasonable to assume we will understand gravity by the time we colonize Mars. We'll probably have at least a 5-10 person base on Mars by 2050 and I seriously doubt that we will have figured out gravity by then.

I have a thought though, I saw an article about NASA simulating high gravity environments and the positive effects it had on stimulating the heart and muscles to become more conditioned to a higher gravity, they probably just used a centrifuge device with a chair in it like pilots use. One of those could probably be but on Mars to keep from losing so much muscle mass and whatnot.

>> No.6348624

your heart would become weaker because it's easier to pump blood in a loweer gravity environment. muscles would become signiciantly weaker and if you stayed on mars for say the 2 years it takes for mars and earth to line up, then you came back to earth, you would have significant difficulty holding yourself up.

the pilot centrifuge is high-g training and is well studied. you can learn to take on higher gravity environments with standard training, so i assume it would be just as simple to have someone sit in a centrifuge for 30 minutes a day to keep the heart and muscles strong

>> No.6348812
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6348812

lower gravity = lower bone density, muscular atrophy

>> No.6348813

>>6348603
Don't think giving birth on Mars would be possible without a Caesarian.

>> No.6348957

>>6348813
Lrn2obstetrics

>> No.6348984

>>6348813
So, women would no longer have pelvic muscles on mars and the doctors wouldn't have vacuums or forceps?

>> No.6349073

>>6348984
Lower gravity wouldn't affect the ability to create a vacuum. refer to space.


And, just another excuse for sluts to be slack...

>> No.6349087

Is it not feasible that if we could set up a base on Mars we would also have medical technology that offsets the side-effects of a low gravity environment

>> No.6349139

>>6348603
We really don't know. The reason you can't find anything is that we haven't done any studies on what happens to the human body in partial gravity - we don't have any way to do that! You can't simulate less than 1 gee on Earth, and the ISS (lacking a centrifuge) can only do 0 gees.

We know zero gravity does a lot of bad things to you.

And we know that one Earth gravity is OK for you.


But we have absolutely NO idea what the curve in the middle looks like.

Maybe 0.38g is enough to get rid of most of the worst effects of microgravity. Maybe it's not enough. We have no data.

>> No.6349148

>>6348812
Why not just wear weights to simulate a higher force of gravity?

>> No.6349155

>>6348608
How can gravity even be simulated?

>> No.6349159

>>6349148
Can gravity even be compensated just by adding mass to your body? Genuinely asking.

>> No.6349161

>>6349159
Well, yeah.

The thing that makes your muscles and bones weak in low gravity is that they don't have to support you against as much force.

If you make yourself heavier, there's more force pressing down on your body.

Weight is a function of local gravity and mass. If local gravity's too low, add more mass.

>> No.6349179

>>6349161
I think that as long as Martian gravity is tolerable we shouldn't even bother trying to maintain Earth levels of bone/muscle mass. Chances are you won't be going back anyways.

>> No.6349181

>>6349179
We don't know if Martian gravity is tolerable, though.

That's what we'd do in case it's not.

(We also don't know if 0.38g is high enough to prevent Space Blindness or reproductive difficulties.)

>> No.6349193

>>6349181
>We don't know if Martian gravity is tolerable, though.
>That's what we'd do in case it's not.
Well yeah, but if it isn't tolerable human settlement will almost certainly be limited to brief scientific expeditions.

>> No.6349200

>>6349193
I dunno. If it turns out that the only difficulty living there is "put on this heavy suit to get you up to Minimum Tolerable Weight" , I don't think that'd prohibit settlement.

My personal hunch is that most of the problems with microgravity occur because it's so close to zero-gravity (no convection, surface tension is the dominant force, fluids just kind of ball up) and that nearly any gravity at all would be enough to overcome most of the really bad problems. The rest is just a question of bone loss and muscle loss - and that can be solved by wearing heavy clothing or regular exercise.

>> No.6349209

>>6349155
Not an expert on the stuff. involves rotation. Thread about it on here yesterday.

>> No.6349237

>>6349155
Spin shit around, like in the Gravitron at a carnival.

Or, if there's a local gravity field but it's too low, then just pile some weights on whatever needs to be heavier.

>> No.6349245

>>6349200
>My personal hunch is that most of the problems with microgravity occur because it's so close to zero-gravity (no convection, surface tension is the dominant force, fluids just kind of ball up) and that nearly any gravity at all would be enough to overcome most of the really bad problems.
I suspect that as well but we need to get some real data. Hopefully someone in charge pulls their heads out of their ass long enough to send a research team there.

>> No.6349248

>>6349245
I should hope we don't send a research team to Mars flat-out to try and get data. That'd be hideously expensive, for little proportional gain.

I think we should just put a space station with a big centrifuge wheel up.

>> No.6349252

The baby's immune system would be severely compromised.

>> No.6349257
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6349257

>>6348603
as far as I know, there are no articles because there are no experiments. I don't know of any experiments about humans in reduced gravity environments.

>> No.6349267

>>6349248
Well someone is going to do it eventually, if only for the prestige, so they might as well conduct some actual research while they're planting flags and making cheesy speeches.

>> No.6349271

>>6349159

You really add mass to all the fluids in your body. So reproductive and vision problems would still exist.

>> No.6349272

>>6349267
I think we SHOULD go to Mars.

But I don't think we should go there until we actually have the infrastructure in place to turn it into something useful and sustainable, not just another hideously-expensive one-shot Apollo.

>> No.6349273

>>6349271
I meant to say you can't add

>> No.6349280

>>6349272
Long term planning is anathema to politicians
How do you sell
>We're going to Mars, but it's going to take 20 years of unglamorous prep work and 200 billion dollars in total to do it
to a population that doesn't even want to pay, say, 1% more income taxes to keep the country functional

>> No.6349284

>>6349280
Private enterprise and billionaires who read too much science fiction.

>> No.6349293

>>6349284
now that's some fiction right there

>> No.6349305

>>6349293
Billionaires who read too much science fiction have already managed to get the price of space launch to drop by about a factor of two.

And they might well get it an order of magnitude or so lower than that, if re-usability pans out.

>> No.6349322

>>6349305
Being a contractor for a space program is not the same thing as bankrolling the entire undertaking yourself