SPACEFLIGHT ISN'T GLAMOROUS

Today is the anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the spacecraft destroyed by an explosion 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986. On February 1, 2003 the shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry. Seven crew members perished each time and, of course, there have been other fatalities in the history of spaceflight. That got me thinking about the way we romanticize astronauts and other explorers. Is it because of that risk of death? Or because they’re going places most of us will never go?

It certainly isn’t because such occupations are glamorous in their day-to-day reality. Seafaring explorers lived in appalling conditions with cramped quarters, no hygiene, and rampant illness: dysentery, smallpox, and scurvy because of their lack of nutrition. Arctic explorers brave weather that makes even this winter of the “polar vortex” seem balmy in comparison, forcing them into adopting methods of food preparation and waste disposal that most of us would find revolting. And astronauts definitely have their share of distasteful circumstances to contend with.

The Mercury astronauts went through grueling training that involved a lot of vomiting, enemas, and catheters. The first American in space, Alan Shepard, famously had to pee in his spacesuit because of a long launch delay in 1961. Soon after that a urination system was designed for men that was like an extra tough condom with a tube at the end leading to a collector bag. But when it was decided to integrate women into the astronaut program during the space shuttle years, the toilet design was a problem—the male engineers didn’t have a good understanding of female anatomy regarding urinating in zero gee. Some navy nurses volunteered to undergo weightlessness aboard NASA’s infamous Vomit Comet aircraft and pee to see how the urine would behave. Urinating in space can be a very serious matter if the spacecraft or space station’s toilet malfunctions. High tech diapers were chosen as the solution. Spaceflight fans have made much of the fact that Sandra Bullock wears somewhat sexy underwear in the movie Gravity. The reality is more like thick shorts of a super-absorbent material, like a pull-up diaper. The wearing and disposing of such things, not to mention the handling and disposal of other human waste, can’t be considered sexy in any way. Equally unappealing is the inescapable fact that long-term spaceflight requires the recycling of as much water as possible for drinking and other purposes, including human waste water. Don’t think about that too hard.

There are lots of other ways that the astronaut life is undesirable. In zero gee most astronauts experience space sickness at some point. They get back pain. Fluids shifting in their bodies make them become congested like having a bad cold. They lose bone mass and muscles atrophy without regular strenuous exercise. Heart muscles lose their conditioning. Then there’s the clothing: moon suits and EVA suits are bulky and uncomfortable enough in an atmosphere, but once in the vacuum of space the air in them causes them to stiffen even more, making it difficult to move. The food? Well, it used to be that astronauts had to eat paste-like foods from plastic squeeze tubes, and special compressed space food sticks that didn’t produce crumbs. Now they can eat fresh fruit, candy, peanut butter etc. but they still have to be careful that particles, and especially liquids, don’t get away and fall into the electronics. You and I can have a far more enjoyable meal any day of the week.

Sure, they’re part of an elite group, and they get some fantastic views out the window. But, all in all, there’s not much to envy about what astronauts go through. So I suspect most of us will remain content to romanticize our space heroes…and worship them from afar.

COSMIC GAS STATION

A lot has been made this week of the successful reawakening of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta was launched in 2004 to rendezvous with the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The long chase took it beyond the orbit of Jupiter, and because Rosetta is solar powered it was put into hibernation in June 2011 to save energy. Now that Rosetta has come back closer to the sun (673 million kilometers) there’s enough sunlight to run the spacecraft and ESA scientists waited breathlessly this past Monday to see if the probe’s alarm clock would successfully wake it up again. Rosetta still has a long way to go to catch up with the comet. If all goes well, it’ll make a major course alteration in May, rendezvous with the target in August, and then the lander portion of the spacecraft will land on the comet itself on or about November 11^th, 2014. That’s a big deal. There have been fly-bys past several other comets over the decades, but this will be the first landing, the first really good chance to have a look around and analyze samples. That’s important, not just to satisfy our curiosity, but to answer some key questions with practical applications.

My interest in comets was probably peaked as a kid reading Jules Verne’s novel Hector Servadac, also called Off On A Comet. Of course, it wouldn’t actually be possible for a comet colliding with the Earth to scoop up some humans—alive—and allow them to survive throughout a two-year orbit and return safely to Earth. But I loved the adventurous potential of the story, and have even written a (so-far-unpublished) novel inspired by it. As for the reality, there’s lots of inspiration there, too.

We already know that comets are mostly made up of water ice, dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide), and dust. While we look at asteroids for the mining of raw metal ores, their lack of an atmosphere is a big impediment if humans are to work them. All of that ice in comets, on the other hand, could be a ready source of atmospheric gases for human bases on asteroids or in open space. Maybe even more important, that ice can be broken up into hydrogen and oxygen and provide rocket fuel in huge quantities. It’s far too expensive to hoist much fuel out of Earth’s gravity, so there have long been plans to mine ice on the Moon for that purpose. But imagine a huge chunk of raw fuel material already in space, and maybe even going roughly in the direction we want it, say, toward the asteroid belt. We could maneuver the comet by using its own fuel. Comets have already been observed undergoing course changes driven by rockets of their own: powerful bursts of CO2 jetting outward from pockets of dry ice melted by the sun’s heat.

Sure, it’s not quite as simple as just steering a giant cosmic gas station all over the sky, but a carefully-calculated orbit change could certainly place a comet in the neighbourhood of a promising asteroid swarm. Some have even suggested that comets could be used to help provide an atmosphere for Mars so humans could eventually colonize it. And all of these plans depend on learning more about these celestial wanderers through missions like Rosetta.

One thing, though: hijacking and using up a comet for our own purposes would remove one of Nature’s most spectacular shows for future generations. Maybe they’ll forgive us when we can offer them a vacation on scenic Mons Olympus?

WILL WE EVER NEED PERSONAL ROBOTS?

If you’re of a certain age the first personal robot in fiction that made an impression on you may have been Rosie the maid from “The Jetsons” animated TV show. The idea of robotic servants has been around much longer than that, of course, and every year we expect to come closer to finding one available in stores. Well, OK, maybe at Neiman Marcus. But if you were keeping an eye on the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, there really wasn’t much that fits our usual concept. You know: the basically humanoid robot, a similar size to us with roughly analogous limbs and sensors that will do all of the jobs around the house that we don’t feel like doing. A few look cute, but aren’t much use as anything but toys or novelty items. The robots that do useful work are specialized: a small robot that will wash your windows, another that will clean your barbecue grill. Yes, there are scientists all over that are working to develop humanoid robots, but my question is: why bother? Why make a general purpose robot that can “do it all”—like us, only better? It’s a massive challenge, and it isn’t necessary. And from what I see, that’s not the direction things are going.

I have a feeling our cities of fifty years from now will surround us with specialized robots that will each do one thing and do it well. There’s no need for a robot that can clean the house and drive you to an appointment. It’s much more likely we’ll build houses with self cleaning rooms, each with its own Roomba and wipers on the windows (especially with dirt and moisture-repellant surfaces everywhere). And we’re getting closer all the time to self-driving cars. (You can read more about them here.) So-called smart appliances will not only order the groceries but assemble and cook them, too. And brain-computer interfaces will connect us to the internet and, through it, to all of our robotic devices, so we won’t even have to lift a finger to set anything in motion. Why would we need a robotic servant that looks sort of like us?

Child care? Maybe. But a daycare space with one smart computer (or human) in charge and a lot of mechanized baby movers or glorified waldos, for the physical tasks, seems more efficient and more likely. Medical care could use robots, but they wouldn’t have to be mobile. We’d go to them, or remote-controlled gurneys would carry us.

I don’t see a practical need for an all-purpose humanoid robot at all, unless it’s for one of the least practical reasons of all: companionship. (No, I’m not going to get into all the movies and books about glorified sex dolls—you can check them out on your own.) But if it’s companionship we want, don’t make a robot that looks like Rosie. A big, cuddly teddy bear would probably be the way to go.

As for me, I hope we still have dogs.

WILL PRIVATE MARS MISSIONS HURT SPACE EXPLORATION?

This week we learned that from more than 200,000 original applicants 1058 people have moved on to the second phase of the selection process for Mars One, a plan to send a team of four volunteers on a one-way trip to Mars in 2024 to found the first colony there. The number will be whittled down to about 40 within the next four years, and those finalists will train for seven years. A reality TV show audience will pick the final four. The ongoing reality show element is one of the core means by which the whole project is supposed to be funded. After all, the estimated cost is about $6 billion.

A somewhat similar undertaking called Inspiration Mars involves a plan to send one man and one woman to within 100 miles of Mars’ surface and back to Earth again in 2018.

I think projects like these constitute a threat to the long-term exploration of space.

I hate to knock anything to do with space, and I’m all in favour of private enterprise getting involved. I’ve applauded the successes of companies like SpaceX, sending supplies to the International Space Station and launching a Thai telecommunications satellite this week. And several new companies intending to get into the business of space mining are backed by some very big names with great track records. But these ventures are based on businesslike profit models—they’ll be done carefully and conservatively because investors will demand it, and failure is too costly.

I would argue that failure is too costly for the Mars projects, too. We love success and adore heroes, but martyrs cause a different reaction. The two space shuttle disasters and the Apollo 1 fire in January of 1967 rocked people’s confidence in the space program. The loss of human life makes the average person question whether the exploration of space is worth it. And I think the Mars missions are setting themselves up for failure.

It’s appropriate that the largest number of the Mars One candidates are Americans and Canadians because this week our continent is suffering the effects of a much-talked-about “polar vortex” that’s wandered too far south and brought killing cold with it. I hope our would-be Mars-dwellers are taking the opportunity to spend a lot of time outdoors to enjoy the kind of brisk temperatures they can look forward to on Mars on the nicest of days. And, oh yeah, there’s no breathable air. I keep picturing four people living in something like those “bouncing inflatables” carnival kiddie rides unable to go outside without a space suit, unable to get emergency support if needed, and unable to ever return to Earth. To me, that doesn’t have the makings of a colony, it has the makings of a disaster. All played out on reality TV for an audience that will probably be drawn to the prospect of death in the same way as people who watch car racing. Good for TV ratings maybe, but if the Mars One crew dies, how many people back here will still have the stomach to see their tax dollars or financial investments going into projects that have that kind of risk? Similarly, even if Inspiration Mars does get two people to the vicinity of Mars and back, will that really be inspiring? How many people remember the names of Apollo astronauts on the missions that orbited the Moon but didn’t land?

We need to get to Mars, but we need to do it right, with a colony mission that has a good chance of long-term success, and the infrastructure for two-way travel. Let’s pool resources and all that enthusiasm and construct a staircase to the stars, instead of some makeshift rope ladders.

That’s what will enable us to take the next step outward, and the next after that.