Hello:

The main premise of the building of large rotating space settlements
with artificial gravity is that humans can't live for long time in
zero G. I though that besides health problems, probably during the
development of fetus they would end affected and deformed. The later
is false, there have been experiments with chickens and small animals
that grown normal in zero G.

I wonder if people can really survive to live in large zero G cities
for years, perhaps with minor health controls and adaptations.

If so, why do we need rotating space settlements?

Just to hear your oppinion, guys.

Omar Vega

From: Omar E. Vega

> I wonder if people can really survive to live in large zero G
cities
> for years, perhaps with minor health controls and adaptations.

Marshall Savage is optimistic that we can. But he might not
have had all of his facts right.

One might choose to view the reduction in muscle and bone mass
as adaptations to the new environment. But then there's a troubling
reduction in the function of the immune response, and it would be hard
to deny that was a medical debilitation.

> If so, why do we need rotating space settlements?

sgId395/stime95075485/nc1=3848627/nc2=5008827/nc3=4990215>
My opinion: At the onset we need to be as conservative as
possible with our assumptions. At a later point, when space settlement
is well established, there can be opportunity to get crazy and
experiment with different things.

One thing that I like about the O'Neill proposal as that one can
be conservative even to the point of not assuming that anything less
than 1-G would be acceptable, and we can still design for that.

Regards,

Mike Combs

Omar E. Vega wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> The main premise of the building of large rotating space settlements
> with artificial gravity is that humans can't live for long time in
> zero G.

If adults are exposed to 0g for months they suffer a number of problems,
including bone loss, deconditioning, etc. Most of these aren't a
problem unless you return to Earth.

However, there are 0 data on the effects of 0g on children. They would
certainly grow up too weak to visit Earth without a wheelchair or worse.
If you did that to your kids on Earth, child protective services would
take your children away from you, and for good reason. It's child abuse.

I though that besides health problems, probably during the
> development of fetus they would end affected and deformed. The later
> is false, there have been experiments with chickens and small animals
> that grown normal in zero G.

First time I've heard of this. There have been some plants that have
gone full cycle in 0g, but some work, some don't. Handling a chicken in
current space stations would be quite a trick. Do you have references?
>
> I wonder if people can really survive to live in large zero G cities
> for years, perhaps with minor health controls and adaptations.

Maybe some day.
>
> If so, why do we need rotating space settlements?

To raise healthy children.

On 14/11/2007, Omar E. Vega wrote:
>
> I wonder if people can really survive to live in large zero G cities
> for years, perhaps with minor health controls and adaptations.

Very probably, but it's probably not very healthy. If you're not stressing
your skeletal muscle system, and zero-g tends not to, then you'll doubtless
end up with poor glucose control. As in type II diabetes.

If so, why do we need rotating space settlements?

Well, there is the great mambo chicken research, of course. They came out of
the centrifuge with drumsticks to die for, and I think they lived longer as
well. Humans probably would do equally well in high g; and this suggests
zero-g is undesirable.

Omar Vega
>

--
-Ian Woollard

We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
imperfect world things would be a lot better.

>From what I have read and know about muscle and bone loss from 0,g is
that on a long enough time line its fatal.. Ie person living in 0,g
will die but it would be very slow and painful given there be a point
where your bones would easily break at the lightest bump..
So answer to you question is no, without some kind of gene therapy to
resist bone and muscle loss or some kind of mimic gravity.. I tend to
like rotating the ship or station for mimic gravity because its
simple. which means you would not need super overly fit people manning
them.. Which would make finding qualified people to man said spaceship
or city much much easier...
"Its easier to build a space ship for the astronaut than it is to
build and astronaut for the spaceship".........Me

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Omar E. Vega" wrote:

the_gunfighter_45acp wrote:
>
> From what I have read and know about muscle and bone loss from 0,g is
> that on a long enough time line its fatal..

This is a massive extrapolation of the data, at least in humans, which
are only available for up to a year's stay or so and do not show
anything anywhere near a fatality. I don't know if the changes tend to
level out after awhile or not.

Ie person living in 0,g

Well,

As far as it goes, you convince me guys there is a chance humans can
addapt to Zero G.... in the long term. Some genetical engineering
tricks would be necesary, I bet, but at least in principle it could
be done.

Just imagine tridimensional cities in 3-D expanding on space in all
directions...

Well, back to the ground, I bet first space must be conquered by a
more conservative way: space settlements with artificial gravity...

For some reason, though, I have always though, conquering the space
in space settlements O'Neil style is like fish escaping the oceans
and conquering the earth dry surface, but carrying with them
aquariums to live inside...

It is just an image, but I bet if man is going to conquer space, in
the long term is better it evolves to better addapt to the new
environment.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, Al Globus wrote:
>
> the_gunfighter_45acp wrote:
> >
> > From what I have read and know about muscle and bone loss from
0,g is
> > that on a long enough time line its fatal..
>
> This is a massive extrapolation of the data, at least in humans,
which
> are only available for up to a year's stay or so and do not show
> anything anywhere near a fatality. I don't know if the changes
tend to
> level out after awhile or not.
>
> Ie person living in 0,g
> > will die but it would be very slow and painful given there be a
point
> > where your bones would easily break at the lightest bump..
> > So answer to you question is no, without some kind of gene
therapy to
> > resist bone and muscle loss or some kind of mimic gravity.. I
tend to
> > like rotating the ship or station for mimic gravity because its
> > simple. which means you would not need super overly fit people
manning
> > them.. Which would make finding qualified people to man said
spaceship
> > or city much much easier...
> > "Its easier to build a space ship for the astronaut than it is to
> > build and astronaut for the spaceship".........Me
> >
> > --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
> > , "Omar E. Vega"
wrote:
> > >
> > > Hello:
> > >
> > > The main premise of the building of large rotating space
settlements
> > > with artificial gravity is that humans can't live for long
time in
> > > zero G. I though that besides health problems, probably
during the
> > > development of fetus they would end affected and deformed.
The later
> > > is false, there have been experiments with chickens and small
animals
> > > that grown normal in zero G.
> > >
> > > I wonder if people can really survive to live in large zero G
cities

From: Omar E. Vega

> For some reason, though, I have always though, conquering the space
> in space settlements O'Neil style is like fish escaping the oceans
> and conquering the earth dry surface, but carrying with them
> aquariums to live inside...

Well, it might interest you to know that life very nearly did that. If
you eliminate the red and white corpuscles from your bloodstream, what's
left is salt water with certain other dissolved minerals all in pretty
much the same proportions as sea water. It's very much like when life
left the oceans for the land, they carried a bit of the ocean along with
them.

Your fish on land-going aquariums might be a better analogy to O'Neill
habitats, but still, I think it's very significant that given a choice
between starting over from scratch with a totally new kind of
biochemistry, and taking the kind of saltwater biochemistry it already
knew worked along with it, life chose the simpler solution.

> It is just an image, but I bet if man is going to conquer space, in
> the long term is better it evolves to better addapt to the new
> environment.

Freeman Dyson thinks this is the route of future life in space, even to
the extent that he envisions life able to literally live in a vacuum.

Regards,

Mike Combs

On Nov 26, 2007, at 13:29 UTC, Combs, Mike wrote:

> > It is just an image, but I bet if man is going to conquer space, in
> > the long term is better it evolves to better addapt to the new
> > environment.
>
> Freeman Dyson thinks this is the route of future life in space, even
> to the extent that he envisions life able to literally live in a
> vacuum.

That's not all that hard to imagine. I estimate that within a century
or so, we'll have mind uploading, at which point it'll be much easier
and cheaper in most cases to build our bodies to suit the space
environment, than to build environments to suit biological bodies.
(For more info, see .)

However, there are plenty of reasons to remain interested in
O'Neill-style habitats: we don't know for sure how long it will take to
develop uploading; we value biological life and will want to preserve
it and take it with us even when that's not strictly necessary; etc.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout
Inspiring Applications, Inc.
http://www.InspiringApps.com

On Nov 26, 2007 7:23 PM, wrote:
(...)
> That's not all that hard to imagine. I estimate that within a century
> or so, we'll have mind uploading, at which point it'll be much easier
> and cheaper in most cases to build our bodies to suit the space
> environment, than to build environments to suit biological bodies.
(...)

Well, if uploading is developed, then the only "environment" that will
matter to us will be computer hardware, no matter if it is in the
bottom of the sea or in space of wherever. I think that there will be
space "habitats" in such a scenario, but they will be simply
solar-powered balls of computronium containing billions of minds
inside. Those minds, supposing them human-like, would probably choose
to perceive their environment as an Earth-like planet, or an O'Neilian
space habitat, or even things that aren't allowed by the laws of the
physical world but would be cute environments, like "hollow earths"
and other bizarre constructs.

On Nov 26, 2007, at 22:40 UTC, Lucio_de_Souza_Coelho wrote:

> Well, if uploading is developed, then the only "environment" that will
> matter to us will be computer hardware, no matter if it is in the
> bottom of the sea or in space of wherever. I think that there will be
> space "habitats" in such a scenario, but they will be simply
> solar-powered balls of computronium containing billions of minds
> inside.

I'm sure such artificial realities will indeed be popular, but I myself
won't live in one -- maybe visit for a few weeks' vacation, but the
moment I find myself tempted to stay, I'm logging out and returning to
my nice solid artificial body in the real world.

Somebody has to stay rooted in reality, and continue looking outward
rather than inward. I imagine that most of the folks on this list are
just the sort who understand why that is important, and will choose to
do so even when it means giving up the comforts the artificial
realities will be able to produce.

I also think that there will be those with an ecological bent for whom
it's important not just to be in the real world, but to preserve and
spread real, biological ecosystems. That's where space colonies (of
the sort we normally think about) will be important. I can imagine a
Rama-sized colony dedicated entirely to the cloned or inferred life
forms of the Cretaceous period, for example; another filled with salt
water and teeming with fish and other ocean life; and so on.

Best,
- Joe

Joe Strout
Inspiring Applications, Inc.
http://www.InspiringApps.com

On Nov 27, 2007 1:23 AM, wrote:
(...)
> I'm sure such artificial realities will indeed be popular, but I myself
> won't live in one -- maybe visit for a few weeks' vacation, but the
> moment I find myself tempted to stay, I'm logging out and returning to
> my nice solid artificial body in the real world.
(...)

I think that such uploaded "people" will be able to live and work in
artificial realities *without* loosing contact with the physical
world; I don't see a choice of the type "one or the other" here.

For instance suppose that you are a virtual person living in one of
the computronium ball habitats. You and your society of virtual people
"see" an artificial reality of their choice - say an earth-like
planet. However, you know that there is a physical reality in the
"outside" and in fact you *need* that reality. For instance the
population of "virtuals" may grow and you need to manufacture another
computronium ball, that is, more hardware, to run them. Then you would
need to, say, detect, intercept and "colonize" a small meteoroid
transforming its raw materials into computronium. That work would have
to be done by physical probes and robots that could even be "piloted"
or controled by virtuals.

Of course, I guess that most of those "people" would see the physical
world much like the urban population of nowadays world sees, say,
agriculture. I see vegetables and meat and other stuff in my plate, I
know that I need them, and I know that they are somehow produced in
distant places outside my city. But they are not my main concern,
there are specialized professionals taking care of them.

I am not so enthusiastic of "uploading" because I believe with the
so primitive computers we have today hardly could imitate how man
thinks, less to serve as repositories of conscience. I am afraid
there is a long way to go to understand mind, and I believe that
research will take hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ahead.
A.I. specialists certainly predict the "holy grial" comming for the
next five years... but that's a tradition in A.I., anyways.

Now, I believe that adapting to a zero G environment, even for
living inside compresed cilinders, requires serveral evolutive steps
that fascinates me. For instance, our mind is hardwired for living
in the surface of heart, a full 3-D city or environment is harder to
grasp and process. Perhaps certain evolutive touches here and there
would help our biology to adapt better to those environments.
Another case is evolving to resist more radiation, as the space
environment requires. etc. I think evolution will start slowly but
with time some really different variations of human beings would be
around.

Well, we are talking Sci Fi now.

From: Omar E. Vega

> Now, I believe that adapting to a zero G environment, even for
> living inside compresed cilinders, requires serveral evolutive steps
> that fascinates me. For instance, our mind is hardwired for living
> in the surface of heart, a full 3-D city or environment is harder to
> grasp and process. Perhaps certain evolutive touches here and there
> would help our biology to adapt better to those environments.

There was a sci fi novel titled "Falling Free" where it was suggested
that genetic engineers might put an extra pair of arms in place of legs
since legs are of little use in 0-G. That kind of genetic engineering
might be more near-term since it strikes me as an "edit job" rather than
the wholesale creation of brand new body structures.

I've wondered about humans whose bodies taper to a prehensile tail
rather like that of a seahorse, suitable for anchoring oneself. Maybe
that could be an edit job too, simply by repeating spinal cord and back
muscle structures.

I've also sometimes thought that rotating a habitat very slowly for
extremely low G (like 1/20 or 1/30 G) might confer many of the
advantages of 0-G while still providing some of the advantages of
gravity, like a sense of up and down and objects laid on a surface still
being there when you came back. In that case, walking might be given up
in favor of flying.

Perhaps wings could be engineered by vastly lengthening the arms and
especially the fingers, with a thin webbing running between the
lengthened fingers and all down the sides of the body. That was the
solution evolution came up with for the problem of how to equip a mammal
with wings in the case of the bat.

But we might want to transition to a 6-limbed body plan in that case.
As tool-users we wouldn't want to settle for the bat's single hooked
thumb on each wing for manipulating objects. So let's have human arms
and then wings both. Which makes you wonder if medieval notions of what
demons looked like might have been a kind of premonition of the future.

> Well, we are talking Sci Fi now.

Yeah, but it's fun to speculate about. This strikes me as less far-out
than uploading.

Regards,

Mike Combs

--- In spacesettlers, "Combs, Mike" wrote:

> There was a sci fi novel titled "Falling Free" where it was
> suggested that genetic engineers might put an extra pair of arms in
> place of legs since legs are of little use in 0-G. That kind of
> genetic engineering might be more near-term since it strikes me as
> an "edit job" rather than the wholesale creation of brand new body
> structures.

I wonder if the same basic effect could be achieved with a special
boot, which would have mechanical fingers. When you bend a toe, the
boot notes that and bends the finger. When in gravity, the fingers
retract or perhaps curl up so as to be out of the way.

> I've wondered about humans whose bodies taper to a prehensile tail
> rather like that of a seahorse, suitable for anchoring oneself.
> Maybe that could be an edit job too, simply by repeating spinal cord
> and back muscle structures.

Again, this could probably be some sort of wearable thing. No need to
tweak genes when you can tweak plastic and software.

> I've also sometimes thought that rotating a habitat very slowly for
> extremely low G (like 1/20 or 1/30 G) might confer many of the
> advantages of 0-G while still providing some of the advantages of
> gravity, like a sense of up and down and objects laid on a surface
> still being there when you came back. In that case, walking might
> be given up in favor of flying.

I could see that. Even in the Moon's 1/6th G, flying under human
muscle power should be possible.

> Perhaps wings could be engineered by vastly lengthening the arms and
> especially the fingers, with a thin webbing running between the
> lengthened fingers and all down the sides of the body. That was the
> solution evolution came up with for the problem of how to equip a
> mammal with wings in the case of the bat.

I guess, but why not just strap on the wings? Then in cases where
wings would be burdensome, you just take them off.

> But we might want to transition to a 6-limbed body plan in that
> case.
> As tool-users we wouldn't want to settle for the bat's single hooked
> thumb on each wing for manipulating objects. So let's have human
> arms and then wings both. Which makes you wonder if medieval
> notions of what demons looked like might have been a kind of
> premonition of the future.

No reason you couldn't have great big synthetic feathers, thus making
us (part time) angels.

>> Well, we are talking Sci Fi now.

> Yeah, but it's fun to speculate about. This strikes me as less
> far-out than uploading.

I'd rank this sort of big-time genegineering and uploading as pretty
close together. But mechanical hands, tails, and wings? A lot less
far-out than either.

From: Xenophile

> I guess, but why not just strap on the wings? Then in cases where
> wings would be burdensome, you just take them off.

Oh, I've written at least a couple of stories where people strap on
wings. The previous poster had said "certain evolutive touches here and
there would help our biology to adapt better to those environments", and
that was the specific point I was addressing.

Regards,

Mike Combs

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"
>
> From: Xenophile
>
> > I guess, but why not just strap on the wings? Then in cases where
> > wings would be burdensome, you just take them off.
>
> Oh, I've written at least a couple of stories where people strap on
> wings. The previous poster had said "certain evolutive touches
here and
> there would help our biology to adapt better to those
environments", and
> that was the specific point I was addressing.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>

Hi Mike, Xenophile:

Making an analogy with the evolution of life in earth dry surface,
when life arrived to the ground was anphibious for a long time.
Frogs, salamanders and similar animals live quite way in water and
in the ground. Nature evolves slowly, step by step.

I bet if some certain genetic fixings are needed to addopt people
better to space, those will be done in a very slow and conservative
manner. For instance, preventing seasickness, making harder for the
organism to lost calcium, and to addopt the brain to 3-D will be the
first steps, slowly, little by little. Perhaps in 100.000 years
humans would have evolved so much we couldn't recognize them, but in
between people more likely won't notice any change at all.

I agree with the idea that boots and other artificial gear will help
people to addopt better and fast. But I think that changed the DNA
couldn't be discarded... at least we start to believe DNA is taboo
and sacred.

--- In spacesettlers, "Combs, Mike" wrote:

> Oh, I've written at least a couple of stories where people strap on
> wings. The previous poster had said "certain evolutive touches here
> and there would help our biology to adapt better to those
> environments", and that was the specific point I was addressing.

Indeed you have. "The Land of Eternal Night" is one, and "Designing
Paradise" is another. Both recommended, if anybody's reading this.
I've even played around with adapting "Designing Paradise" as a TV
screenplay.

I guess what I'm saying is that, for most things that we would
genegineer our bodies for, mechanical stuff probably works as well and
has the advantage of being removable.

Now, to get a little farther out (but still short of mind uploading),
how about severing our legs altogether, and having snap-on bionics?
We would have ports installed (and maybe not just for legs). When we
go into zero-G, we snap off our legs and snap on the extra arms and a
tail; when we return to gravity we snap off the extra arms, keep the
tail as a fashion statement, and remind ourselves to set aside time
after work to visit the axis and snap on those angel wings for an
hour's flying.

From: Xenophile

> Indeed you have. "The Land of Eternal Night" is one, and "Designing
> Paradise" is another. Both recommended, if anybody's reading this.

http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/landnite.htm

http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/paradise.htm

Regards,

Mike Combs