IT TAKES a lot of willpower and brilliance to undergo, and complete, the necessary training for space travel. Of the eight billion people on this planet, only a few get to travel that high, that fast. The rest of us? We have to settle for watching whatever Hollywood gives us instead.
As a species, we’ve not traveled further than our own moon, but Homo viator, man the traveler, dreams much farther. It’s a fascinating topic, a fascinating dream. But most of us simply don’t have the guts to take on 3gs during takeoff for a mission to the International Space Station.
But it turns out that astronauts likely won’t have the guts to make it to Mars, either, even as SpaceX and NASA keep planning to do just that. The Independent reported on a NASA study that found astronauts who travel to infinity and beyond might have their guts destroyed. Here’s more from that paper:
“The new research subjected mice to the same kinds of bombardment by galactic cosmic radiation that would affect humans if they were on long space journeys. That radiation could cause damage to the gastrointestinal tissue that would lead to long-term functional alterations. And the study also raises concerns that those astronauts would be at high risk of developing tumours in their stomach and colon.”
That’s quite a hefty price to pay for leaving the planet. Destroying your guts is no way to live.
Did Hollywood lie to us again? We can’t remember Luke Skywalker having to deal with tummy issues from traveling into deep space. Matt Damon seemed to be in decent shape upon his return from Mars.
Experts say heavy ion radiation is to blame for the threats of bodily harm among the stars. Those who travel to the ISS or the moon on shorter trips aren’t really at as much risk. But if we want to visit Mars anytime in the coming decades, we’d better figure this out.
Scientists hypothesize there may be some medicine we could develop to counteract these developments, but we don’t have anything like that right now. And of course, more studies have to be done on this topic. There’s always more tests to be done.
We still have a few years to figure this out, and Homo faber, man the toolmaker, is the odds-on favorite to solve this problem. Again.