Word: space
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While the U.S. lacks a strong commitment to sending humans to Mars, the Administration's space policy, announced by President Reagan in February, does envision eventual "human exploration of the solar system." Toward that end, NASA has launched Project Pathfinder, a program to develop 18 new space technologies. They include compact nuclear reactors for powering lunar or Martian bases, in-space construction and assembly of spacecraft, and orbiting fuel depots for moon and Mars ships. "You can talk about going to Mars," says Pathfinder Leader Robert Rosen, "but you can't do it without these technologies." Congress appropriated $40 million...
...than 3 ft. in diameter, to accommodate the rocky Martian terrain. In a still unapproved mission, the rover, imbued with artificial intelligence and television eyes, would seek out appropriate rock samples and stow them in a craft designed to return them to earth for analysis. At NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., experts are designing living quarters for the space station that the U.S. hopes to begin assembling in earth orbit in the mid-1990s. Plans call for private sleeping cubicles, each equipped with a TV, sound systems and a computer. Mars enthusiasts point out that approval...
...still not fully understood. And radiation, says NASA's Michael Bungo, "is going to be a showstopper." Once beyond the earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, which protects terrestrial life from most lethal radiation, crew members would be vulnerable to cosmic rays. These highly energetic particles travel through space at close to the speed of light and can produce hazardous secondary radiation when they strike atoms in the aluminum walls of a spacecraft. During a single Mars mission, says Frank Sulzman, chief of NASA's space-medicine and biology branch, unprotected astronauts could receive an unacceptably high dose of radiation...
Another possible hazard on a long space journey has its source on planet earth: human nature. Soviet flights have demonstrated that performance levels begin to decrease as the days stretch into months. Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko, whose 326 days aboard the space station Mir set a space endurance record last year, was down to only two hours of productive work a day toward the end of his eleven-month flight and had become decidedly peevish. "Leave me alone," he once snapped to mission control. "I have a lot of work...
...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 Collins has suggested an even simpler remedy: send up a crew of four married couples...