Humans Biggest Obstacle to Long Term Space Missions

Buy an ad on DigitalJournal.com

During extended missions, crew members face anxiety and loneliness as well as inevitable tension amongst themselves. Then there are the physical hazards of radiation from solar flares or cosmic rays and maintaining fitness in a place where the gravity is nothing like that of earth.

The Apollo missions to the moon lasted only a few days. But a mission to Mars would present an entirely different scenario.

"The human factor is the most uncertain factor," said Benny Elmann-Larsen, co-ordinator of physiology in human space flight at ESA (European Space Agency). Psychological stress could be the key factor.

Research conducted during long term missions on space station Mir, aboard submarines and in isolated outposts in the Antarctica have provided some solutions to the problem.

For example, psychologists could be employed in mission control to ease tensions between crews in space and those on the ground. They can also devise ways of dealing with onboard stress.

Crew members would also be encouraged to use email or audiovisual links to contact friends and family back on Earth while resupply missions would bring them gifts and treats.

With the current state of space travel technology, however, a voyage to Mars would require at least 6 months when the Earth and Mars are so aligned to be at their closest proximity to one another. Once on the Red Planet, crew members would spend about a year engaged in research and exploration. By the time they were ready for the return voyage home, Earth and Mars would changed their relative positions to one another so it would take longer than 6 months to get back. A two and a half to three year space mission compounds the feelings of isolation and cabin fever.

Supply flights would be far less frequent if at all because of the distance involved. By the same token, communications to and from Earth would suffer a 45 minute delay. A crew member would have to wait three-quarters of an hour to get a response to a simple question such as "How are you?"

Can 4-6 people live relatively harmoniously with each other within the confines of the space shuttle equivalent of a sardine can?

In 1999, the Russian space program carried out an isolation experiment lasting 110 days in a mock space station. Two modules housing four and three people respectively were used. One module housed 4 Russian men, the other one Canadian female, a Japanese male and an Austrian male. The findings were less than encouraging.

A New Year's celebration in the module housing the Russians erupted into a 10-minute brawl between two of the occupants. Blood splattered on the walls before the other two men stopped the fight.

The mission commander ventured into the module housing the international participants, pulled the Canadian woman out of sight of the experiment's cameras and French kissed her twice. Both times the Canadian fought in vain to resist him. This so traumatized the Japanese participant that he quit the experiment. The Canadian and Austrian continued with the experiment but demanded locks be fitted to their module door.

Could a screening program and rigorous training regimen weed out potentially unfit candidates? The recent case of Lisa Nowak, the love-struck astronaut, clearly demonstrated the answer is no. Human nature is unpredictable.

"The whole thing is quite a big shrug [unknown] at the moment," says one expert.

Here is a list of some of the major health hazards crew members will face on a mission to Mars:

1. Psychological Stress: Anxiety, depression, loneliness, claustrophobia, personality clashes with fellow crew members.

2. Emergencies: Ranges from motion sickness to impaired co-ordination to appendicitis or toothache.

3. Radiation: High speed space particles can shred DNA, thereby increasing risk of cancer.

4. Atrophy of Muscles: Need to maintain strict exercise routine to overcome muscle loss under zero gravity conditions.

5. Bone Demineralization: During long term space missions, bones become more porous and therefore weaker.

The first long duration space mission will be very interesting. Confining a small group of people isolated from the rest of humanity and far away from Earth in a very small space for a long period of time will inevitably lead to conflicts. The people involved have to be exceptionally mentally and emotionally stable and you cannot always tell if they are so beforehand or how they will react until they are in the "field" so to speak.