"How settling Mars could create a new human species" Topic

"In the upcoming Hollywood movie, The Space Between Us, a child is born to an American astronaut on Mars. The mother dies in childbirth, but the baby survives, and is raised by a small colony of astronauts on Mars. In the trailer, a somber voice-over intones the central conceit of the film: "His heart will simply not have the strength for the Earth's gravity; his bones will be too brittle." In other words, there is no turning back. It's a question worth pondering—if we choose to leave Earth, will our descendants ever be able to return?
We're moving ever closer to Mars. NASA hopes to put humans on the red planet in 30 years, Elon Musk in 10—first perhaps, just to visit, but eventually, to create self-sustaining Martian cities. In a September 2016 speech, Musk cited the "two fundamental paths" humanity might take: "One path is that we stay on Earth forever and then there will be some eventual extinction event. The alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization, and a multi-planet species."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I plan to evolve into an alien grey…or maybe, a Vorlon!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

I assert that the effects of Martian gravity are impossible to predict at this time. While the article is correct that we do know about the effects of microgravity (what most people refer to as "zero gravity"), that's not the same thing as the effects of 0.33g, which isn't "microgravity" at all.
(Keep in mind that "microgravity" isn't the absence of gravity at all; it's just the experience of constant free-fall, as in an orbital path; it's not that there isn't gravity, it's that there's nothing to "fall onto" that isn't also falling at the same rate.)
What would it be like to exist in an environment where the rate of gravitational attraction is one third of that between Earth and another object? We have no actual idea. And there is no way on Earth to test those conditions, as the gravitational attraction of the Earth cannot be so easily reduced over any significant period of time (a continuously dropping elevator that lowers its contents at a rate producing a 0.33 g environment is one solution, but how would one create such an elevator so as to have a continual descent of even a single day, much less weeks, months, or years?)
We could, of course, create a simulated environment in orbit in a rotating space station. Assuming a reasonably comfortable rotational period of 2 rotations per minute, such a station would need to have a radius of about 75 meters in order to produce a force equivalent to Martian gravity. (The station need not be a full torus; a counterweighted "box on a string" would suffice, but the effective radius of its spin would still have to be equally as large.)
So, barring the creation of that experimental platform, or just flat-out sending living things to Mars, assertions as to the physiological effects of Martian gravity are at best "informed speculation."

……..assertions as to the physiological effects of Martian gravity are at best "informed speculation."

With all due respect, allow me to totally disagree. The musculoskeletal and circulatory atrophication in a Martian microgravity environment will have the same result as the atrophication in a Space microgravity environment. It will just take longer as the gravity difference to what we evolved to withstand is less on Mars.

The changes to muscle and bone samples, alterations in enzymatic activity and gene alterations after a mere 14 days in space is easily found in the research. Do you honestly think those changes won't happen after months on Mars? Remember, with 2 years travel time, the astronauts will have some pretty good alterations already. Then throw the radiation into the mix too.

But I hope we are both alive to see how that unfolds. Maybe we can make a bet. Loser buys the winner a months supply of Ensure, denture adhesive, and diapers.