Experts on the effects of space travel on the human body told a presidential commission on Wednesday that there were challenges but no “showstoppers” in building a permanent moon base, then sending astronauts to Mars.
Aerospace medical experts Stanley Mohler and Mary Ann Frey, both longtime researchers in the field, identified a number of health risks future astronauts could face, from radiation poisoning to meteoroid collisions, but said NASA was developing plans for every known contingency.
“From the medical standpoint, there is further research to be done, but we don’t see any ... showstoppers out there,” Mohler told the President’s Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond.
The commission, chaired by former Air Force Secretary Edward “Pete” Aldredge, is charged with developing strategies for implementing the space goals announced by President Bush in January.
Problems and solutions
“It should be a relatively straightforward program of establishing 90-day (crew) rotations on a colony on the moon,” Mohler told the panel in hearings at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Radiation, whether from solar flares or cosmic rays, was the highest hurdle identified by the scientists.
While the moon has plenty of lunar soil to shield habitation modules, a Mars mission, which could last 15 months with most of that time in transit, presents special problems.
But Mohler said the Russians have developed effective countermeasures that involve positioning their ships so the crew is shielded from most of the radiation from solar flares, and research in the United States is producing lighter-weight radiation shielding.
The psychological factor
Frey added a second problem to the top of her list: the psychological effects of long-term space travel.
“Crew members will be isolated at great distances from Earth with long lag times in communication. They’ll be crowded into close quarters. They will be in danger, and their sleep will be degraded,” Frey said.
Despondency or depression under these conditions might diminish crew skills level and affect safety, experts say.
Funding is also a threat to crew health, she said, touching on a subject often mentioned at such forums because the Bush plan calls for major advances in space exploration with only minimal funding increases.
“A much greater level of commitment and funding for biomedical research and countermeasure research development must be made than has ever existed before,” she said.
“This commitment will pay off in space and on Earth. The spin-offs from spaceflight research and technology have made possible our lifestyle on Earth in every area, including health,” Frey said.
Medicine in space
One area of concern since the dawn of human space flight did not present a major worry for Mohler -- what to do about routine medical emergencies that arise when the nearest hospital is thousands, if not millions, of miles away.
Mohler said space pharmacies with as many as 200 different medications will be available, as well as “an onsite treatment facility, where, if a person’s appendix acts up, they can bring it out.”
On Thursday, the commission will hear from John Glenn, a former U.S. senator and the first American to orbit the Earth.
