Mission to Mars

> Saw in the Globe & Mail newspaper,January 27/04,
> page A-16,"The proposed U.S. expedition to mars will
> require Humans to spend longer in close proximity
> with each other in a confined capsule than ever before
> ,says consulting psychiatrist Dr.Raj Persaud.Psycholo-
> gists will have to find new ways to select crews that
> will not crack in close confinement.Evidence suggests
> that the best crew may be Female.We may be celebrating
> the first Woman on mars in a few decades.They tend to
> be smaller than men,saving on fuel,water and oxygen.
> Most important of all,they tend to be more tolerant of
> their companians."On the same page was this:
> Dr.Richard Cohen of Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of
> Technology tells The San Jose Mercury News that living
> in weightlessness can cause headaches,loss of
> appetite,muscle atrophy and height gains of 6 to 8
> centimeters.Without gravity,blood and other fluids move
> toward the head and away from the lower parts of the
> body.Astronauts develop very skinny legs called chicken
> legs,this is not life threatening,but after a long
> flight can make it difficult to walk.....Once we have
> Space Colonies with artificial gravity this won't be a
> problem,Space is for everyone-not just astronauts and
> scientists.Sincerely,John Hadden(jfhadden@...

This idea has some flawed premises...

The first one is that humans cannot spend long periods of time
together in close quarters. This has been demonstrated to be false
by any number of examples. Try looking at a Nuclear submarine arctic
explorers and so-on. There have even been tests done by NASA where
scientist lived together sealed in a can for six months to test many
aspects of a long trip to mars. close quarters is not as big an
issue as they let on.

the second flawed premise is that women are nicer than men ... I
don't think I need to elaborate

The third is that they are smaller. There are any number of women
that weigh more than me so...

I think that we want astronauts who are the most qualified rather
than finding synthetic excuses to exclude large groups of our
population.

Jeffrey