Large starship crews vs small starship crews

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

And/or a bunch of really frustrated women.

Assuming that your spaceship isn’t able to accommodate them anyway, I would argue that babies are only an indirect problem.

If an astronaut’s personal beliefs preclude them from using contraception or having sex other than for procreation, then a long duration spaceflight will most likely entail an equally long period of enforced celibacy in the company of other people who may not share your beliefs and will probably be taking a partner off to a quiet corner of the hab module at some point during the journey.

That sounds pretty tough to me. Not insurmountable but tough.

Apart from that, there are many options for not having babies. One of the most pragmatic would be to have every male crew member make a sperm donation and then have a vasectomy before the journey. Almost foolproof contraception plus non-radiation damaged sperm for starting a family afterwards.

So no, it’s not nearly as big a problem as you’re making out and, depending on the crew involved, could conceivably be a total non-problem.

if an personal beliefs preclude them from using contraception it would disqualify them from the position.
In short on an Mars mission You would not want children, you also know that humans fool around all the time. This is not species limited, Europeans has 2-3% Neanderthal dna. 
And no the weight of the crew is not an relevant factor on long space missions. Crew moral is and we have lots of experience here.
Now down the line we will test this using larger mammas like sheep and cows on Mars. We would also have lots of experience with humans living long term in low gravity. 

[Guest]

31 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

So an even deeper question I would ask you is this. what questions do you want science to answer for you in space or mars or the moon?

There's a lot more than you think. Geology, for instance. We don't know a whole lot of things about how Earth, Moon and Mars formed. Then there are various biological experiments that can be done, including extremophillic and extremotolerant organisms. It's hard to answer precisely without getting technical, but if I were to go to space, I'd probably not run out of stuff to do within my own field (biophysics, so admittedly not a very thoroughly explored one) even if I stayed up for the rest of my life, provided sufficient research equipment, of course.

The first amazing thing about science is the sheer vastness of human knowledge. The second amazing thing is the even greater vastness of things we don't know. The sheer scale of those two together is, perhaps, the most amazing thing about the world in general.

Edited October 15, 2019 by Guest

[Spacescifi]

8 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

There's a lot more than you think. Geology, for instance. We don't know a whole lot of things about how Earth, Moon and Mars formed. Then there are various biological experiments that can be done, including extremophillic and extremotolerant organisms. It's hard to answer precisely without getting technical, but if I were to go to space, I'd probably not run out of stuff to do within my own field (biophysics, so admittedly not a very thoroughly explored one) even if I stayed up for the rest of my life, provided sufficient research equipment, of course.

The first amazing thing about science is the sheer vastness of human knowledge. The second amazing thing is the even greater vastness of things we don't know. The sheer scale of those two together is, perhaps, the most amazing thing about the world in general.

 

 

Science is fun, but I can tell you without exception that for most all Earth life (barring any exceptions I am unaware of), none will do as well off Earth as they do on Earth. As it is humans need a lot of help to do the basic stuff they take for granted on Earth off Earth. Just surviving requires a lot of technology.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

(barring any exceptions I am unaware of)

There's enough of them to fill a whole semester's worth of weekly lectures. Really, you're unaware of a whole lot of things, it would seem, I can tell you a lot more than you can tell me. Compared to places like Atacama desert, Mars doesn't seem like a bad place to live. Don't think research of this sort is some kind of stumbling in the dark. We have a good idea what we're looking for here, and a lot of research has already been done in that area.

Most of Earth's life is optimized towards, well, living on Earth. Because that's where they live. That said, Earth is not so life-friendly in all places, and you can find very interesting creatures in those areas. Some of them would likely do well on Mars (better than on Earth, even, because they wouldn't have anything to compete with), and this is why NASA is so paranoid about biocontamination. 

[Spacescifi]

7 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

There's enough of them to fill a whole semester's worth of weekly lectures. Really, you're unaware of a whole lot of things, it would seem, I can tell you a lot more than you can tell me. Compared to places like Atacama desert, Mars doesn't seem like a bad place to live. Don't think research of this sort is some kind of stumbling in the dark. We have a good idea what we're looking for here, and a lot of research has already been done in that area.

Most of Earth's life is optimized towards, well, living on Earth. Because that's where they live. That said, Earth is not so life-friendly in all places, and you can find very interesting creatures in those areas. Some of them would likely do well on Mars (better than on Earth, even, because they wouldn't have anything to compete with), and this is why NASA is so paranoid about biocontamination. 

So say you are on mars right now in a habitat module and you have a rover and even a rocket to reach a ship in orbit to go back home. You also have a bunch of extremophile specimens with you (alive).

 

Options you have

 

1. Put them on Mars and put life on a world that appears to be totally dead.

2. Search for life on Mars.

3. Run science tests on extremophile lifeforms from earth in closed martian test environment.

 

Which do you choose? If me, I would choose 3 in a heartbeat.

[Guest]

You do 2 and 3, then if you are certain Mars is dead, you proceed with the organisms, as a first stage of terraforming. That said, I would expect 2 and 3 alone would keep a mid-sized scientific base occupied for quite a while.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

There's a lot more than you think. Geology, for instance.

Mostly the only.
Everything other can be tested in Earth/LEO/Moon conditions, and mostly once, as the near-zero-G is obviously lethal for a body development.

So, a small Skylab-sized temporary biostation on Moon lasting for 3 years is all what we need to finish the space biology topic forever.

Astronomy doesn't need celestial bodies.

Meteorology takes place only on 3-4 bodies.

So, the geology+seismology are the only things to do, and most celestial bodies are just balls of dirty ice.

[Spacescifi]

9 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Mostly the only.
Everything other can be tested in Earth/LEO/Moon conditions, and mostly once, as the near-zero-G is obviously lethal for a body development.

So, a small Skylab-sized temporary biostation on Moon lasting for 3 years is all what we need to finish the space biology topic forever.

Astronomy doesn't need celestial bodies.

Meteorology takes place only on 3-4 bodies.

So, the geology+seismology are the only things to do, and most celestial bodies are just balls of dirty ice.

 

I agree.

 

16 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

You do 2 and 3, then if you are certain Mars is dead, you proceed with the organisms, as a first stage of terraforming. That said, I would expect 2 and 3 alone would keep a mid-sized scientific base occupied for quite a while.

 

Evolution is popular and widely accepted as a fact, not merely as a theory, so that leads to assumptions that there might be life on Mars or other worlds. Since it is widely accepted that provided that certain conditions exist, life will just find a way to exist via random chance making a cell with the will to survive and the ability to reproduce and access to a food supply, along with survival of the fittest.

Mars appears to be dead by all accounts, and it is only implicit trust in evolution that makes anyone hope or suspect otherwise on Mars or any other far flung world.

 

Edited October 16, 2019 by Spacescifi

[KSK]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Mars appears to be dead by all accounts, and it is only implicit trust in evolution that makes anyone hope or suspect otherwise on Mars or any other far flung world.

It wasn't until fairly recently that we found good evidence for water (away from the polar caps) on Mars and evidence that water has played a significant part in Mars' geological past. Mars appears to be dead - but we've barely started looking for life there. And if we did find life, I'd be hard pressed to think of a greater discovery. 

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Since it is widely accepted that provided that certain conditions exist, life will just find a way to exist via random chance making a cell with the will to survive and the ability to reproduce and access to a food supply, along with survival of the fittest.

Nonsense. We think this is plausible. We have numerous theories on what those conditions might be and how abiogenesis got started on Earth. We don't know what those conditions were, still less that 'life will just find a way to exist via random chance.' Which is why finding life on Mars would be such a discovery - apart from answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe - it could teach us about those early conditions on Earth. Potentially at any rate.

What do those Martian microbes use as genetic material?  Terran DNA? Peptide nucleic acids? Some other double helix but with alternative bases? Something completely different? 
Similarly, how does the Martian genetic code work? Does it use the same set of amino acids as Terran life. How are those amino acids encoded in Martian genetic material (whatever it might be) Do Martians use amino acids at all? What about biochemistry? Does Martian metabolism use a similar set of reactions to Terran metabolism? How are those reactions catalysed? 

So many questions. Maybe Martian life is identical to Terran life (in which case, step 1 should be to check very thoroughly for contamination!). Maybe its recognisably Terran (DNA, RNA, similar proteins) but with some evolutionary divergences? Maybe it's totally different - which doesn't help us learn much about Terran abiogenesis but would be a fascinating result in its own right. Or maybe it lends evidence to one of our models for abiogenesis. Maybe Mars is an RNA world, for example.

This is all highly conjectural of course. So far as we know at the moment, Mars is indeed dead. But the point is - we won't know until we go looking. And we sure as heck won't find out by fiddling around with Terran extremophiles in a simulated Martian test environment.