Unknown limitation of space travel.

[QuickTwist]

https://www.livescience.com/62000-scott-kelly-dna-twin-study.html?utm_source=notification

Found this quite enlightening actually. We are still human, even in space.

 

[Happy]

I think you mean we are human until we go to space, then we are mutants.

 

[Kuu]

We are still human, even in space.

One year is just too short. Imagine the changes there would be after multiple years. And even more interesingly, after multiple generations. We really need to send more people out there and expand all sorts of space research.

I think you mean we are human until we go to space, then we are mutants.

Will SpaceX astronauts be known as X-men?

EDIT: @QuickTwist what's with the thread title? Have more to say?

 

[QuickTwist]

My concern is the same as yours kuu. If that happens in one year, what on earth could be the consequences of spending decades in space?

I bring this up as a limitation, because it was, at least for me, something I never would have thought could produce such a drastic change on someone. Astronauts are basically the healthiest people on earth. If they have problems after a year and they can handle stress well... I think you can see why it would be a limitation. As a consequence, It seems my prediction that if/when we become a multi-planet species, all the well off have more opportunity to go off into space and earth is left with the rejects... so to speak. I don't think such a premise would be good for the earth, as well as its creatures with the people living on earth who are simply not as superior as those who would get the opportunity to live amongst the superior.

I have long thought that humans have recently had an exponential growth in understanding since the industrial revolution because the collective unconscious knows the earth is about to go into complete catastrophe.

 

[Auburn]

Will SpaceX astronauts be known as X-men?

So not only is he Tony Stark, he's Xavier too?

I think you mean we are human until we go to space, then we are mutants.

^ This. I think serious bio-engineering is maybe two or three decades away. By the time we're out inhabiting the solar system, we'll be genetically suited to new environments. Not to mention the prospect of becoming artificial/cybernetic, which is also around the corner.

I too am curious about the thread title, I was expecing a discussion on the impossibility of FTL travel and so forth. But overcoming biological limits is the least of our worries.

 

[elliptoid]

One limitation of space travel which is interesting is our confinement to the local group of galaxies due to Hubble's expansion.

 

[QuickTwist]

I too am curious about the thread title, I was expecing a discussion on the impossibility of FTL travel and so forth. But overcoming biological limits is the least of our worries.

There is little that you can use to conclude that. We have no idea how far reaching our biological limitations are for space travel.

Keep in mind all the shit that NASA had to do just so people could keep someone in space for a year.

Also, and I don't mean to bring this thread into a completely different topic, but genetic engineering is a long ways off. The ethics alone are something that could delay it hundreds of years.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I would imagine the same sort of change happens in general under change of environments and presence of new stressors.

Anyway, according to Musk we'll have night clubs and pizza joints on Mars within a couple of decades, so let's not worry about this DNA stuff.

Hell, even small fluctuation in the composition of earth's atmosphere like the depletion of the ozone layer poses a significant threat to life on earth (e.g. increased chance of cancer from UV radiation etc), but living on Mars - where the atmosphere is 96% carbon dioxide - no problem! Also, its mass is like 15% of earth's which will cause massive bone density degradation.

If people do survive on Mars long-term, it will be interesting to see what sort of mutant freaks they will evolve into.

 

[Haim]

They actually made a fix article https://www.livescience.com/62044-scott-kelly-space-genes-not-changed.html.
The change was in gene expression, I don't find it to be significant considering the extreme difference in their environment

 

[Pyropyro]

They actually made a fix article https://www.livescience.com/62044-scott-kelly-space-genes-not-changed.html.
The change was in gene expression, I don't find it to be significant considering the extreme difference in their environment

Yeah, it's gene expression. We can see these changes in stressful terrestrial life as well. However, the astronaut's body's reaction hints at how stressful space travel is to humans.