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No clue as to the veracity of this.
If I'm to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It's romantic. It's adventurous. It's cool! It's also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve the species in the event we ruin the Earth—a deus ex humana to bail ourselves out even if under those circumstances we wouldn't, perhaps, deserve it. I root hard for the Artemis missions and the Gateway project, which could begin construction on a lunar-orbit space station by the end of the decade, and a crewed mission to Mars in my lifetime. I dream of what's beyond that, because it's good and healthy to dream. In the way are innumerable technological hurdles, which are worth tackling for their own sake: We progress scientifically by determining which challenges can be overcome.
But what if certain challenges are not hurdles but roadblocks, and not technological but biological? If the problem is not what we can build, but what we are? It would be a huge blow to future hopes of a cosmic diaspora if the obstructions were not about time and distance, but about the fundamental weaknesses of the human body. We've long known of the deleterious effects spaceflight can have on the human body: bone loss, anemia, weakened immune systems, higher cancer risks, the list goes on. Some issues are caused by microgravity; others by the background radiation of space—NASA estimates that astronauts are exposed to the equivalent of up to 6,000 chest X-rays. Astronauts in low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station hangs out, are partially shielded from this radiation by Earth's magnetosphere, but even they suffer the effects.
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defector.com
What If We’re Stuck Down Here?
If I'm to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It's romantic. It's adventurous. It's cool! It's also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve the species in the event we ruin the Earth—a deus ex humana to bail ourselves out even if under those circumstances we wouldn't, perhaps, deserve it. I root hard for the Artemis missions and the Gateway project, which could begin construction on a lunar-orbit space station by the end of the decade, and a crewed mission to Mars in my lifetime. I dream of what's beyond that, because it's good and healthy to dream. In the way are innumerable technological hurdles, which are worth tackling for their own sake: We progress scientifically by determining which challenges can be overcome.
But what if certain challenges are not hurdles but roadblocks, and not technological but biological? If the problem is not what we can build, but what we are? It would be a huge blow to future hopes of a cosmic diaspora if the obstructions were not about time and distance, but about the fundamental weaknesses of the human body. We've long known of the deleterious effects spaceflight can have on the human body: bone loss, anemia, weakened immune systems, higher cancer risks, the list goes on. Some issues are caused by microgravity; others by the background radiation of space—NASA estimates that astronauts are exposed to the equivalent of up to 6,000 chest X-rays. Astronauts in low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station hangs out, are partially shielded from this radiation by Earth's magnetosphere, but even they suffer the effects.
More:
What If We're Stuck Down Here? | Defector
If I’m to be honest, I believe in a future of space colonization because I want to believe in it. It’s romantic. It’s adventurous. It’s cool! It’s also, in a worst-case scenario, the way to preserve the species in the event we ruin the Earth—a deus ex humana to bail ourselves out even if under […]
defector.com
