Keith Cowing on microgravity research

Keith Cowing on microgravity research (on the front page of NASA Watch
today):

"Although the International Space Station remains a budgetary priority, some
scientists feel that its usefulness for carrying out scientific research has
already been diminished, by, for example, the cancellation of a large
centrifuge seen as essential for biological research. That cancellation,
says Keith Cowing of the watchdog website NASA Watch, will "set back the
ability" to develop ways to prevent the loss of muscle and bone by
astronauts in prolonged weightlessness. And yet, he says, President Bush's
exploration initiative is supposed to be leading toward trips to "Mars and
beyond," where such measures will be essential."

I sent him this email:

I've objected to this viewpoint for nearly 20 years in discussions on the
sci.space newsgroups on Usenet. There is no fundamental reason that
astronauts have to travel to Mars and back in "prolonged weightlessness".
There is a quite simple engineering solution to this problem. You attach a
cable between your trans-Mars injection stage and your manned vehicle and
spin the thing for the trip to Mars. Same thing on the way back, only the
cable is now between your manned vehicle and your trans-Earth injection
stage. This acceleration isn't gravity, but it should stop loss of muscle
and bone. In the absence of centrifuge data, the conservative engineer would
spin the structure so the astronauts feel one gravity of acceleration.

Perhaps you've just worded your original statement poorly, or your original
statement was butchered by the author or editor of Technology Review. In any
case, what the centrifuge will really provide is data *between* zero gravity
and one gravity. This data could show that your rotating vehicle need not
produce one gravity in order to prevent loss of muscle and bone. Such a
finding could decrease the mass of the tether and associated hardware
necessary to provide some acceleration on the trip to and from Mars.

Given that my degree is in Aerospace Engineering (major in dynamics and
control, minor in structures), I suppose it's no surprise that my solution
would be to ignore the biological issue by throwing hardware at the problem.
:-)

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)


.

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