Traveling to Mars Will Wreak Havoc on Our Bodies – Can We Prevent It?

 I'm bemused by the notion the only hope for the survival of our species is "escape" to Mars...bemused because it's an absurdly delusional fantasy. But a fantasy apparently compelling enough to many that I feel motivated to try and pop it with a pen.

My perspective on delusion in us humans was the topic of my last blog if you care to see it.

https://davewavehealthway.blogspot.com/2021/04/deconstruction-of-hubris.html

NASA has compiled a lot of data about human health in the context of prolonged weightlessness, or to put it more simply, in the absence of being on and with our "mother" Earth. All data points in one direction, rapid erosion of health in every parameter, which would eventually result in premature death. Well we already have quite a bit of that here on earth (also the result of delusional thinking), but I suppose "in for a penny, in for a pound" as the saying goes.

NASA does not promote this data for understandable reasons. First, it's an impediment to the realization of a popular science fiction fantasy that was in some (large) part the motive force behind NASA to begin with.

How big an impediment? Really big. It points to myriad other factors beyond weightlessness that are equally impedimentary. It also points to the very likely possibility of factors as yet unidentified. All factors taken together essentially point to one thing - life beyond the biosphere of Earth is so improbable as to be essentially impossible.

One does not have to look very far to begin to see allusions to this data. For example, one article (I borrowed the title for this blog from) at this link:

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/07/407806/traveling-mars-will-wreak-havoc-our-bodies

And a few lines from the article I felt the need to correct:)

“People think of technology as the limiting factor in space flight, but it’s not,” said Thomas Lang, PhD, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at UC San Francisco. “Human physiology is the limiting factor.”

Would more accurately read: "Biology itself is the limiting factor".

Nutritional biochemist T. Colin Campbell frequently makes the point biology is so complex we will likely never completely understand it. But he also makes the point we don't have to completely understand it to observe what works and what doesn't work. And let's just do that (for crying out loud). Colin Campbell also deserves the Nobel Prize in Medicine, but you may have noticed Nobel Prizes are never awarded to any idea that would have negative impact on economies in the near term.

Anyway...

OK, here's one more, then enough of this nonsense:

“We’re attuned to living in gravity,” Lang said.

Would more accurately read: "We're literally the biological/physiological/anatomical product of countless interactive phenomena that exist on Earth, including gravity".

And living anywhere else is a complete delusion. So, while the contemporary T. Barnum Bailey (never give a sucker an even break) Mister Musk has sufficient financial reason for promoting this delusory popular fantasy, it ain't gonna happen. We need to figure out how to live here if our species is going to continue to flourish on a going forward basis.

Radical deindustrialization anyone?