NewMyths.com Issue #66 - Living Above the Clouds

Living Above the Clouds

Nonfiction – by Peter Jekel

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

~T.S. Eliot

A life in space.

It would fulfill the dreams of science fiction readers and probably some of its authors as well, not to mention the many scientists who have worked on various space programs. Since Skylab and Salyut in the 1970’s and Mir from 1980 to 2000 first orbited the Earth, and with the current International Space Station a reality, space stations would appear to be outside of the realm of science fiction. However, we are still a long way from realizing the musings of science fiction authors to create worlds in space where people can live out their lives in their entirety, whether these ‘worlds’ orbit a planet or exist as generation ships on long voyages to other solar systems.

The first mention of a space habitat came when Edward Hale, American author and minister, wrote The Brick Moon in 1869. The story describes the launch of an artificial satellite made of bricks, with humans who accidentally find themselves aboard. Russian astronautics pioneer, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who was inspired by the writings of science fiction pioneer, Jules Verne, wrote about space stations in the early 20th century. Two decades later, German physicist and engineer and a pioneer in astronautics, Hermann Oberth, wrote about their possibility.

Space stations took on a new reality when in 1929 a Slovenian rocket engineer, Herman Potocnik wrote The Problem of Space Travel – The Rocket Motor, which offered readers the idea of a rotating wheel space station to create artificial gravity. Space pioneer Werner von Braun, the genius behind the American landing on the Moon, in 1952 published the idea of a wheel-shaped space station as well, citing the pioneering work of Potocnik.

Russian engineers, meanwhile, continued to pursue the work of Tsiolkovsky to design space stations which laid the groundwork for the first space station ever orbited. In 1971 the Salyut 1, based on the work of the Russian engineers, served as the foundation not only of future Salyut and Mir missions but also today’s multinational International Space Station.

To make the reality of extended space travel or habitats in space, we have a long way to go. Currently, the record for a person in space is 437.7 days, held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov who lived aboard Mir from 1994 to 1995. From his brave undertaking and the missions of all of his predecessors, scientists have been able to ascertain some of the limitations of the human body in space, thereby allowing them the ability to try and correct or compensate.

In fact, there is a discipline of medicine that explores the effects of space on the human body. The subject area is fascinating, but the branch is known by the rather dull name of space medicine. Space medicine first made its appearance well before the space age, as a discipline in 1948 when former Nazi German physiologist Hubertus Strughold, came to the United States after World War II to become a space medicine professor at the School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. He predicted some less obvious problems that would occur if people worked in the low gravity environment of space.

One of the first problems for a space traveler is the acceleration that is felt by the human body during launch and the deceleration during re-entry. Human bodies have been exposed to g-forces ranging from 3 to 8.2 g with no ill effects. However, one has to realize that all of the individuals were highly trained pilots or astronauts. High g-forces even for brief periods can cause unconsciousness, blindness and even, in extreme cases, death. Some technology has been developed to combat g-forces; space shuttle astronauts, for example, have been outfitted with special suits to deal with g-forces.

Once astronauts reach orbit, body fluids will start to redistribute themselves. One of the first impacts of the weightlessness of orbit is that astronauts will experience a headache condition, similar to what is experienced here on Earth as stuffy sinuses and headache.

Headache and stuffy sinuses aside, a trip into space can do wonders for your appearance. If you have ever felt a little bloated around the midsection, a trip to space is just the answer. The intestinal tract will float upwards, causing the average person to lose up to ten centimeters around their middle. A quick remedy to what can often prove to be a difficult problem. If back pain has you stooped over, space is just the ticket. Not only does your spine straighten in the weightless environment, you will also be a little bit taller than you are on Earth. The sinus/headache condition would appear to be a small price to pay. Don’t be too quick to judge, though. The reduced midsection and straightened spine comes with a price tag as the straightening of the spine can ironically cause lower back pain.

Motion sickness is one of the impacts of being in a space habitat, the weightlessness affecting the balancing system of the middle ear causing a kind of vertigo. Not everyone is affected, however, and some are affected more than others. In fact, a macho male astronaut will not be pleased to hear that his female colleague only experiences motion sickness ten percent of the time and men at least half.

Longer missions spell greater perils for astronauts. Muscle begins to atrophy from lack of resistance in the weightless environment. The redistribution of body fluids causes some of those same fluids to be urinated out and as a result, tissue and cells dehydrate. The remedy for this is, as for a bad hangover, hydrating properly. But like a bad hangover, it is never 100% effective.

The immune system is also impacted by long-term space ventures; increased sensitivity to allergens as well as increased prevalence of Staphylococcus, Proteus and Streptococcus infections, three opportunistic pathogens. Viruses that may already be present in the body, which are normally suppressed by the immune system, may also become active. This happens here on Earth quite frequently; probably more frequently than many realize. If you had chickenpox as a child, the virus has never left your body and will possibly re-manifest itself later in life with a vengeance as shingles.

One of the most devastating impacts of living in space is calcium loss from the bones. A number of interventions undertaken during Russian and American space programs to combat this loss have mostly proved futile. To reduce this loss, there have been a number of interventions undertaken during Russian and American space programs, interventions that have mostly proved futile. Keeping to a regular exercise regime shows some promise, but this is only a bandaid, since the exercise only slows the degradation down but does not stop it. When astronauts and cosmonauts return to Earth after long-term space ventures their recovery from calcium loss is slow and in some cases irreversible. Some drug experimentation on rats in simulated weightless conditions shows promise and has been found to actually prevent bone loss.

Another life-threatening problem that happens on long-term space forays affects the heart. Not only does the heart shrink in size, long space missions can also cause some astronauts and cosmonauts to experience irregular heart beats. In fact, in 1987, cosmonaut Aleksandr Laveikin had his mission cut short due to an irregular heartbeat that developed when he exercised. Though some scientists may dismiss the heart shrinkage as nothing that cannot be corrected by increasing fluid intake, others are not so sure. One experiment conducted at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine found that when rats were placed under weightless conditions for fourteen days, the muscle fibres of their hearts began to shrink and could not be repaired with increased fluid intake. If heart muscle fibre shrinkage is significant, the heart may cease to function entirely.

Perhaps the most interesting effect of long-term space adventures is psychological. The present studies on astronauts and cosmonauts have provided scientists with some insight, but limited. The best information that we have today comes from studies of isolation here on Earth, such as on polar or high alpine expeditions or other ventures in isolated areas such as submarines. Ironically, the best therapy for the feeling of ‘cabin fever,’ as the condition has been dubbed, is to get outside. Not really a possibility in space.

Many of the problems that we see with respect to long term space voyages have their origin with the lack of gravity. Watch many “science fiction” movies and gravity aboard a ship or space station is simply explained as being created by a gravity machine or worse, ignored altogether. Forces such as gravity cannot be simply created or ignored. According to Newtonian physics, gravity is a force that is related to the mass of an object, and the more massive the object, the greater its gravitational attraction. Increasing mass is not really an option on a space mission since space is often at a premium; its possibilities have not escaped at least one science fiction author though.

An extremely large amount of mass would be needed in order to produce even a small amount of gravity. Science fiction author Charles Sheffield, in his McAndrew Chronicles, conceived of a disc made of degenerate matter one hundred meters in diameter and one meter thick. In total, it weighs 1300 billion tons, sufficient to create a ‘gravitational force.’

Sheffield’s idea aside, how can we create gravity without increasing mass? We apply another property of matter: inertia. Inertia is the tendency of matter to remain in a constant state of rest or to continue in a straight line at a constant acceleration unless acted upon by another force. Therefore, to create “gravity,” rotate an object. By doing so, there is a tendency of matter to flee the centre in a straight line. This is called centrifugal force. One way to illustrate centrifugal force is to take a bucketful of water and swing it around; the water in the bucket is held even when the bucket is at the highest part of the swing arc. The pull is not the centrifugal force directly but the centripetal force. Centripetal force is the force that keeps the object traveling in a circle and is directed along the radius moving towards the centre. The hull of the rotating space station or spacecraft can provide the centripetal force.

If centrifugal force creates the effect of ‘gravity’ on the space station, there will be variances in the ‘gravity’ throughout the rotating vessel or station. It will be greatest at the outside edges of the station or ship and weakest at the axis of rotation. A major league pitcher would have a great deal of difficulty controlling the spin or even direction of his ball on a rotating space station. That’s because the smaller the rotating object, the more noticeable the curve. The larger the rotating object, however, the less noticeable the curve. That is why we do not notice the rotation that is experienced here on Earth and many a major league pitcher can dazzle with their throws.

One Russian engineer, Eugene Podkletnov, in the 1990’s claimed to have created ‘gravity’ by making a device that consists of a spinning superconductor which produced a powerful gravitomagnetic field. Efforts to replicate the experiment, however, have not been successful.

Science fiction has come up with an alternative way to deal with the weightlessness in space. Lois McMaster Bujold in her novel Falling Free features humans that are bioengineered to function normally under the weightless conditions of outer space.

A space station or a spaceship provides a shell against the vacuum of space, but that is all. In order for humans to function and thrive in space, we would need a life support system to provide the necessities of life. Essentially, there are three types of life support systems. The first is of historical interest and really not practical in space. It is an open system. The best example of an open system is a jet aircraft where the main intervention is an air supply and some form of air circulation system. The flights are usually of short duration so that food and waste disposal are rarely of concern.

The second type of life support system is a semi-closed system. Present spacecraft are essentially semi-closed systems. There is a method of air supply, heating, food supply and waste disposal with connectivity to the Earth. In simple terms, they are not totally independent systems.

Future spacecraft on longer missions and even longer term stays on space stations will not function in any open or semi-closed system. In a typical closed system, nothing is wasted. Everything is recycled. However, even in such a closed system, there is the Second Law of Thermodynamics that is inviolable. It states that the disorder of an isolated system such as we may have on a long term space mission increases with time. That is because there can never be 100% efficiency in the conversion of energy into work; there will always be energy expended as heat. A perfect ecology will never be truly achievable. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora about a generation starship bound for Tau Ceti illustrates the dramatic and vivid effects of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in action.

One experiment that looked at humans living in a closed system was a failure due to a small error in the setup. Biolab 2, owned by the University of Arizona since 2011, was an ambitious project of private firm Space Biosphere Ventures. In the early 1990’s, it was constructed to be a self-sustaining biosphere with analogues of the ecosystems of Earth. However, in one of the two missions a miscalculation of the drying of the concrete used in the structure doomed it to failure leading to oxygen usage far exceeding what was expected. As a result, outside air was introduced to correct the error. An error like that on a self-sustained space station or starship would be fatal. In the next Biosphere mission there was an imbalance in the oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle. Ideas flowed as to what they might be but in the end it looked like it was a possible introduction of microbes from outside or even insects. In the end, it turned out that a small leak was causing the imbalance. However, the missions did enlighten scientists with a lot of useful information for possible future space station or starship ventures. Most recently a NASA experiment isolated a group of six humans in a remote area of Hawaii to study the effects of human isolation. Since this experiment has just ended, the findings are still pending.

A life support system is only part of the answer on a space habitat. Outer space is lethal to people due to intense ionizing radiation from numerous sources such as cosmic rays and solar flares. Even orbiting some planets, including Earth with its Van Allen belt, made up of charged particles from the Sun captured by Earth’s magnetic field, exposes explorers to excess radiation out in space. Jupiter, too, has an intense radioactive belt around it. How can we protect our astronauts in a space station or their voyages into space?

One suggestion is that there could be an umbrella-shaped magnetic field created around the space habitat which would deflect the radiation found in outer space, much like the magnetosphere surrounding the Earth protects us from the radiation of outer space.

Another idea that has been suggested is to use shielding. In our everyday lives, for example, we experience shielding materials in action when we go for an X-ray at the dentist and are draped with a lead apron. NASA, in 2002, found that materials with a high hydrogen content such as we have in some plastics and even water can reduce exposure to radiation more than metals. However, as with any material, there is always the problem with material degradation over time. In spite of some of the apparent limitations, materials technology and development may provide the best solution to the problems of radiation in outer space.

Some science fiction authors have envisioned a force field which currently is purely speculative. The use of force fields in science fiction goes back to 1912 with William Hodgson’s speculative horror fantasy novel The Night Land. Isaac Asimov made use of personal force fields for some of the characters in his Foundations series. He also used a planet-based force field in a short story written in Breeds There a Man…? where the field is created to protect a population from nuclear war.

In spite of the purely speculative origin of a force field, it has not stopped scientists from exploring their possibility. One group at the University of Washington is experimenting with a bubble of charged plasma contained within a superconducting mesh of wire that would surround a spacecraft. Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxfordshire, England is working on a design of a satellite surrounded by a charged plasma field. It should be ready for a field test in Earth’s orbit shortly.

Even a localized magnetic field, material shield or charged plasma bubble surrounding a space habitat may not be enough in the event of a solar flare (flares are periodic outbursts of extreme radiation from our sun or other stars). However, there is always the possibility of creating flare shelters so that when high intensity radiation is detected approaching a space habitat, inhabitants could rush to shelters that are lined with lead or other material that can serve as a radiation shield. Such flare shelters were utilized in Gordon Dickson’s The Far Call, a story about a man who, as U.S. Undersecretary for the Development of Space, helps to plan, against political and cost-cutting backlashes, the first manned mission to Mars.

What about larger objects in orbit around the Earth or the need for protection of a craft moving at huge velocities as they reach for the stars? The greater the velocity of a ship or space station translates into the greater the risk of damage to the craft. It has been estimated that a collision with even a grain of dust in interstellar space at high velocity can create enough energy to destroy the craft. The problem of particles in space, at least the larger ones, is not as big an issue as illustrated in many movies. Space is vast and the visions of weaving through an asteroid belt by a spaceship are pure fantasy.

A space station that remains in orbit around the Earth is more likely to experience a meteoroid strike than a ship in interstellar space, especially in the increasingly crowded environment around our Earth. Broken satellites, tools lost by astronauts and even nuts and bolts are found in increasing numbers around our Earth, each having the potential to create catastrophe.

NASA has come up with a number of solutions to contend with debris in space, whether on a space flight or in orbit about the Earth. For example, when the space shuttle was in orbit, it was orbited backwards, with the engines first. Another idea that has received a consideration is the use of bumpers such as sheet of metal placed a few centimeters away from the habitat’s hull. When a meteoroid strikes, the shield absorbs the shock and the resultant debris and vapours dissipate harmlessly in the space between the bumper and the ship’s hull. The ideal material of a bumper is that it be flexible and light. Unfortunately, a strike on such a bumper would cause a shockwave. The density of the bumper material will determine the strength of a shockwave resulting from an impact with a meteoroid; the shockwave is the greatest when the density of the bumper and the fragment are the same. The ideal density of a bumper has been estimated to be about 2.8 times that of water, about that of aluminum. However, aluminum is fragile and easily broken. Certain ceramics are being looked at as alternatives.

Geoffrey Landis, NASA physicist and science fiction author, has suggested a plasma shield, a volume of ionized gas ten meters thick in front of the superconducting hoops attached to the craft. Landis has calculated that these hoops could be energized sufficiently with just 1/10 of a watt of power. Such shielding could contend with dust- sized particles; however, they could not contend with larger gravel-sized particles.

Science fiction has come up with some novel ideas on overcoming the issue of ship shielding. In Greg Bear’s Eon and its sequel Eternity, the starship that is found mysteriously orbiting the Earth is actually a hollowed out asteroid. George Zebrowski also uses hollowed out asteroids as space habitats in his novel, Macrolife. Arthur C. Clarke came up with a novel and practical solution in his novel The Songs of a Distant Earth, where he proposed a ship surrounded by a thick layer of ice.

We have potential solutions for the lack of gravity, radiation and shielding, but what about a space station design? There are several models of space habitats that have been proposed over the years. One of the first proposals was the Bernal Sphere. A Bernal Sphere is a space habitat that was proposed back in 1929 by John Bernal, who is actually most famous for using X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. His design was a hollow spherical shell sixteen kilometers in diameter and filled with air meant to house between twenty and thirty thousand people.

In 1975, NASA in its Summer Study program conducted at Stanford University, asked participants to speculate on designs for future space colonies. They came up with a donut-shaped ring, known mathematically as a torus, that is 1.8 kilometers in diameter, rotates once per minute, creating an earth equivalent of gravity and could house about 10,000 to 140,000 people. Through a system of mirrors, sunlight is provided to the interior. The ring is connected to a hub with spokes which serve as passageways for people and things moving to and fro from the hub.

In a variation of the Stanford Torus and the Bernal Sphere, physicist Dr. Gerard O’Neill proposed in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space, Island One a modification of the Bernal Sphere consisting of two counter rotating cylinders connected to each end by a rod. They would rotate so as to provide “gravity” via centrifugal force. O’Neill came up with three designs or ‘islands,’ each larger than the previous one.

Many science fiction writers have looked to the various designs of space stations to imagine their orbital settings. The classic film and novel 2001: A Space Odyssey depicts a 56 meter diameter double ring that produces one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, similar to what would be experienced on the Moon. John Varley, in his Gaea Trilogy tales and James Hogan in several of his books including The Faces of Tomorrow, Endgame Experiment and Voyage from Yesteryear used the Stanford Torus as a setting. Jerry Pournelle and John Carr edited two volumes of science fiction stories set in O’Neill and other types of space habitats. Orson Scott Card’s classic award winning novel Ender’s Game takes place aboard an O’Neill Cylinder with the battle room found at the centre of the habitat to maintain zero gravity. David Williams wrote a technothriller about an O’Neill Cylinder that is attacked by terrorists in The Burning Skies.

Allen Steele wrote a couple of novels that are set on space stations in orbit around the Earth. Interestingly, his novels Orbital Decay and Clarke County, Space read like mainstream novels set on the backdrop of orbiting space stations.

Another type of rotating space habitat proposed in 1997 by engineer Forrest Bishop has many similarities to O’Neill’s design but instead of steel, is built of carbon nanotubes. This would allow the habitat to become larger than O’Neill’s models at almost two thousand kilometers in diameter about the size of the Indian subcontinent. In addition, due to its enormous size, it would not need to be entirely enclosed. Its atmosphere would be retained by retention walls up to two hundred kilometers in height.

In 2000, NASA engineer Tom McKendree came up with another type of space habitat, the McKendree Cylinder, a true hybrid of other designs. It, too, utilizes rotation to create “gravity” and utilizes carbon nanotubes like Bishop’s design, but would consist of two cylinders, like O’Neill’s design, approximately 980 kilometers in diameter. This translates into a ‘habitable’ area roughly the same as modern day Russia.

Many science fiction authors have taken the concept of the orbiting space habitat and extrapolated it into a generation starship. A generation starship is a theoretical type of starship designed to travel the great distances between the stars. With the speed limit of the universe being the speed of light, ships would still take multiple generations of passengers to reach their ultimate destination. Therefore, the ship would become the world of its occupants and their future descendants.

The idea of a slow ship to the stars was first hypothesized by rocketry pioneer, Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In his 1928 essay, The Future of Earth and Mankind, he describes a space habitat equipped with engines traveling for thousands of years to another stellar system. His essay had little impact on the public. It was John Bernal’s, 1929 essay The World, The Flesh and the Devil that popularized the idea of a generation starship. (Bernal, as you recall, proposed the orbital sphere.)

Generation starships have found their way into science fiction tales where authors are able to explore some of the challenges of long-term space travel. In 1940, Don Wilcox wrote what was probably the first story of a generation starship in The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years. Robert Heinlein also contributed to early tales of generation starships such as Universe and Common Sense. Both tales were later combined into his juvenile novel Orphans of the Sky.

Vonda McIntyre’s Starfarer series is about double cylinder space habitats that have been adapted to make faster than light jumps. David Gerrold’s The Galactic Whirlpool is about an O’Neill type of space station that had been retro-fitted into an interstellar starship.

Arthur C. Clarke’s classic Rama series is about the exploration of giant alien spacecraft that have ventured into our solar system. The design of the alien ship is essentially a variant of Bernal’s design.

Since a generation starship becomes the world for its inhabitants for multiple generations, some writers have explored the concept of the passengers actually forgetting that they are even on a ship. Brian Aldiss, in Non-Stop, explored the idea of passengers who forget that they are on a spaceship. Edmund Cooper in Seed of Light and Harry Harrison in Captive Universe also explored the idea. Gene Wolfe’s classic series The Book of the Long Sun is about a generation starship designed on the O’Neill cylinder model in which the inhabitants, too, have forgotten that they are on a ship. Greg Bear in Hull Three Zero wrote of a starship on its way through the emptiness of space. When an inhabitant wakes up, he questions who he is, where he’s going, and what happened to the dream of a new life. And, most importantly, what happened to the ship that he finds himself in. Allen Steele, in the first book of his Coyote series, wrote a chapter that illustrates a man who wakes up before the other inhabitants of the generation ship that he finds himself on. Imagine waking up alone in the midst of the emptiness of space.

A variant of the idea of “forgetting that you are on a ship,” is the idea of knowing that you are on a ship but will never get off; only your descendants many generations ahead will. This is well described in Frank Robinson’s The Dark Beyond the Stars. As the story moves on, the psychological effects of the long voyage begin to impact the crew.

Space travel and living in space will not be without risks, but humankind has always been challenged by the world just beyond the horizon. All explorers of a new frontier have met challenges of the unknown. Space will offer challenges that none of the early explorers would ever have had to contend with, but with improved technology and science we can do it. We must meet those challenges if we are to move forward and explore the next frontier on our doorstep and beyond.

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