Word: nasa
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Other questions about group dynamics abound. Among the foremost: Should women be included on a Mars expedition? If so, what about sex? No one likes to talk publicly about that, admits NASA Flight Surgeon Patricia Santy. "There's no reason, even in a highly motivated professional crew, that the same kind of sexual tensions that develop here in offices aren't going to develop in space." Santy believes women should be included in the crew. If they are, she says, there should be at least two -- both for mutual support and to avoid disruptive sexual entanglements aloft. Former Astronaut Michael...
Cover: Mars globe constructed from Mariner 9 photos -- NASA...
...imposing as the problems of extended space flight seem, most experts are confident that humans can survive the journey to Mars. But in what shape will they be when they get there? Says NASA Physicist Wendell Mendell: "It doesn't do you much good to deliver a human to the Martian surface if that human is inert for a time after landing...
...humans to withstand the effects not only of prolonged weightlessness but also of the transitions from gravity on earth (one G) to zero G in space to 0.38 G on Mars. "We're nowhere near ready to send a human to Mars," says Dr. Michael Bungo, director of NASA's Space Biomedical Research Institute at the Johnson Space Center. "We've got years more of basic research...
Space Scientist Carol Stoker, at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, points out that there would be benefits of artificial gravity beyond the physiological ones. "Toilets would flush properly, things wouldn't float in the air, and just think of surgery in zero gravity," she muses. Malcolm Cohen, chief of the neuroscience branch at Ames, worries about the possible physiological effects of rotation. "Weightlessness is the devil we know," he says, "and we have some idea how to overcome its effects. But artificial gravity in space is a devil we don't know well." Still, he concludes...