Confinements in space

[erkha343]

I recently made a SSTO spaceplane that refuels at a LKO station, and then can reach Eve or Duna. In the game you can send that poor Kerbal all alone for a few months on a very tiny cockpit.

What I'm wondering is, If we suppose that astronauts/cosmonauts don't need any life support or food how cramped could they get and for how long before it starts to do serious damage? Both physiologically and physically.

(Amusing they are alone in the spacecraft)

[magnemoe]

They has done plenty of work with that, both in space and on ground testing, look like you could live in something like the old Russian space station for years, the health effects of zero g are an larger issue.

Say an three kerbal mission with two hitchhiker containers modules and the three man command module would be an realistic setting for multi year missions.

Regarding kerbals I theorizes that they can enter hibernation a will and this let them have low life support demands.

[Motokid600]

Would anyone say that if one was in zero g long enough would they never be able to return to Earth

? That their bodies became so brittle they couldn't survive the forces of reentry.

[K^2]

Yes, that's pretty much the problem. It's not just bones getting brittle, but also your cardiovascular becoming unused to pumping blood against gravity. You can simply have a heart attack and die during your decent or soon after.

[Motokid600]

Sounds like centrifugal habitats are where its at. Rotating modules with a small gym maybe.

[shand]

well at the moment in the ISS there is a strict fitness regime. cant remember the details - but they already have to deal with these problems.

rotating modules are a good idea - but hard to do. at the moment (mostly because you need a large radius or a very fast rotation, bigger radius is expensive until we start using inflatable/reshapeable space thingies.

[EvilotionCR2]

6 to 8 months biologically I think. Psychollogically,I would last two months. With a friend,maybe 4,in a big habitation area of say Copernicus (from constellation),I would last 6 months or so,and with computer games there with a friend,I would last indefinetly.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

Would anyone say that if one was in zero g long enough would they never be able to return to Earth

? That their bodies became so brittle they couldn't survive the forces of reentry.

I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that if you can adjust to microgravity then you could readjust to 1g. Going from microgravity to 1g would obviously be tougher(read: you as a pile of mush on the ground vs. you floating freely in space), but I'm sure we could come up with a process of slow reintroduction of gravity by either slowly spinning up a habitat module or slowly accelerating back to earth.