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2019-02-28, 11:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Human adaptations to living in space?
Hi guys. Read Crest of Stars. Stars the abh, a human subspecies that is genetically engineered for space exploration.
They're immune to the deleterious effects of extreme gravity, radiation, have extended lifespan, and have blue hair.
What kinds of physical and biological alterations should a human have if they want to travel through space the slow way?
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2019-03-01, 02:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
How far do you want to go? Independence of water and oxygen would be nice...
The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2019-03-01, 02:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-03-01, 03:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
That would be nice. Sadly, that would be near impossible. And even if it was, the end result wouldn't really be human.
Ok, several things:
Able to produce their own vitamins
Radiation defensive mechanism on the level of Deinococcus_radiodurans
Is it too far out there to either make symbiotic organs or cell structure that let them directly absorb electromagnetic energy? Is it possible to make them 'charge up' like computers? At least a third of the problems with travelling in space is food preparation.
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2019-03-01, 03:31 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
'Immune to the deleterious effects of extreme gravity' is a very woolly immunity.
Does that mean they're immune to the long term effects of living in microgravity, or do they have improved skeletal design, musculature and circulatory system for living in high gravity environments?
The adaptations for either extreme are almost completely opposed in upright bipeds - for high gravity, you need a powerful heart and circulatory system capable of handling that pressure; in a microgravity environment, that's detrimental as blood will pool in the upper parts of the body since there's no gravity to pull it back down to the heart and the musculature (lower limbs especially) will atrophy due to not requiring to work as hard.
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2019-03-01, 04:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-03-01, 05:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Going away from the extreme stuff and the complicated to describe ones like microgravity, there's a few smaller ones I can think of. Immediately comes to mind for me: Gripping feet. Like our more monkey-like ancestors had. Because in 0G you need to be able to hold onto things when standing on them, or you'll knock yourself off the surface. Maybe a gripping reflex, like animals which sleep on trees, so we could lock ourselves onto a pole or ladder while sleeping, instead of needing to be zipped into secured sleeping bags to avoid drifting while sleeping.
Maybe hibernation? It seems that some humans already can do things in that direciton, but the ability to fall into a very deep sleep or meditation, which lowers metabolic rate and body temperature could be very useful in the long term.Last edited by Eldan; 2019-03-01 at 05:39 AM.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2019-03-01, 07:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
The heart is a pump--it doesn't need gravity to send blood around the body, does it? A strong heart ought to work as well in micro-G as it does in high-G. The main issue with astronauts who spend a long time in micro-G isn't the blood circulation, it's the bones wasting away.
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2019-03-01, 07:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Blood circulation is a problem too. THe problem is that the circulatory system expects the head to be up and the feet to be down, to put it in simple terms. Meaning that the arteries and veins are different: more pressure to get up to the head, but partially passive, gravity assisted transport down, and the other way around for hte legs.
This affects other fluids too: eye pressure changes in microgravity, which can lead to temporary vision problems both on entering and leaving microgravity. There's a current (I think still current) study that looks at the spinal fluid, too, which is apparently largely shifted around by people standing up and lying down,which doesn't happen in 0G.
It also seems that all fluids are generally shifted away from the limbs and towards the torso in 0G.Resident Vancian Apologist
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2019-03-01, 08:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Humans are already immune to the short term effects of zero to low gravity once they've mentally adjusted to it.
I assume you mean they're able to withstand 10 seconds of 10g - in which direction? Fighter jet pilots with training and flight suits can withstand ~9g laterally for extended periods, but resistance to longitudinal forces are much lower; greyout or whiteout (blood being forced away from the head) is less detrimental than redout (blood being forced into the head), with redout potentially causing permanent retinal or brain damage due to the increased pressure.
The circulatory system essentially has two parts - a higher pressure (~2 - 4 kPa during heart beats) arterial system leading straight from the heart, and the lower pressure (~0.4 - 1 kPa) venous system leading to the heart. The venous system is only controlled by a series of one way valves to prevent backflow and is reliant on residual pressure (about equivalent to the diastolic pressure or resting pressure in the arteries between heartbeats) and gravity to push blood back to the heart.
Without the gravity assistance, blood is slower to be recovered from the head. As an example of how much gravity can assist blood flow, when people are feeling faint or have a significant bleeding injury to an appendage, general first aid treatment is to elevate the patient's legs above their head or (if possible), raise the bleeding body part above the heart.
The long term bone loss is another part of long term living in microgravity, but that can be adjusted for with diet and training. You can't re-plumb your circulatory system without re-designing from the ground up as the interface between the arterial and venous system is where nutrients are dispersed to living tissues. Too fast and you waste energy since there's insufficient time for diffusion and other processes to get nutrients and waste products transferred resulting in the modified humans having higher calorific requirements and worse peak performance than regular humans.
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2019-03-01, 08:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
In other words, a system of contracting muscular rings around arteries, redundant veins, extra valves, and a system that activates and coordinates this in reaction to altered gravity is needed?
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2019-03-01, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Oh, most of that exists already. Veins, as an example, have one-way valves in them. And many of the skeletal muscles are already engaged in helping move blood around.
The effect actually doesn't seem to be that massive in space, as far as we can tell. Most of the studies I've seen, cite symptoms like dizziness and red, puffy faces as the main effect that is noticeable so far.Last edited by Eldan; 2019-03-01 at 08:56 AM.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2019-03-01, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2018
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Hand-like feet. They're running less and climbing more.
Prehensile Tails. I don't think we can evolve to get these back, but maybe we could engineer it.
More developed upper body, or perhaps less developed legs.
Thicker skulls due to an increase of head collisions.
More powerful butts. Pooping in low G is a weird thing, and out of hygene perhaps it'd be easier for us to be able to shoot the poop without it sticking to the ass.
Eyes regain our now vestigial nictating membrane.
So for the most part we go prehistoric monkey.Last edited by The Jack; 2019-03-01 at 09:53 AM.
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2019-03-01, 11:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-03-01, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Arteries don't need anything extra to get the blood around as they're already on the high pressure side. It's the collection and return to the heart in the interstitial spaces and venous system that's the problem.
I suppose adding smooth muscle to the venous system could potentially accelerate return, but I have no idea how you could improve diffusion rates aside from front loading the gradient and essentially forcing nutrients into cells (transmembrane pumps and channels will only go so far), which makes nutrient balance in the blood an absolute minefield - compared to a normal human, the modified people would have pretty much every hyper-[blank]-emia you could think of.
Symptoms seem a bit more severe than that and that's only with 437 days in microgravity on an adult. In rodents and other animal experiments, microgravity seems to cause a reduction in the rate of successful full term pregnancies (early term exposure especially), although I concede separating microgravity effects from increased radiation exposure is very difficult.
As far as I know, there's no information on the effects of microgravity on a developing body (ie infant or prepubescent animals), let alone anything at the primate level.
Ah, I see; basically the original statement was unclear what was meant by being immune to gravitational extremes, whether it meant both extremes (high and low) or just one extreme (high or low)
Adaptations to high gravity living (stronger heart, stouter musculature and skeletal frame) is inefficient (at best) or antithetical (at worse) to adaptations to micro or no gravity living.Last edited by Brother Oni; 2019-03-01 at 12:28 PM.
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2019-03-01, 09:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Urgh. OK.
When I said low gravity, I meant that they'll be living in low gravity most of the time. As in, 99.9% of the time.
Remember how most aircraft are limited by how durable their passengers are? Yeah. This is for high speed maneuvers. Small amount of time. Big force.
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2019-03-02, 03:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's impossible to genetically engineer a humanoid intended for long term deep space travel. I'm just of the opinion that human biology isn't adaptable enough to become specialised for long term deep space travel, so your deep space 'humans' aren't actually human at a fundamental biological level (the hyper-[blank]-emia states are actually normal and perfectly healthy for them).
Bear in mind that if they're advanced enough to be space faring, then biology isn't the only solution to the problems of deep space life; for example radiation/microgravity effects on fertility can be solved by technology and cultural methods. Say a couple wishing to have children perform insemination in a more heavily shielded area of the station until successful fertilisation is confirmed, then the female stays within the shielded nursey area until gestation is complete and the infant is mature enough to be sufficiently immune to radiation effects with more heavily shielded clothing.
Advance the technology level high enough and you can have artificial gravity, which alleviates all the microgravity concerns, either throughmagicsufficiently advanced technology artificial gravity generators or good old rotating ship sections.Last edited by Brother Oni; 2019-03-02 at 03:13 AM.
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2019-03-02, 03:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2019
Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Oh. Actually, these are from the abh from Crest of stars. They started as biological drones meant to explore the deepest reaches of space.
They reproduce by vats. Actually, they have to. The radiation resistance is to deal with cosmic radiation.
They got artificial gravity later.
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2019-03-02, 08:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-03-02, 03:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Reading up on Crest of Stars on the proper wiki, it says the genre is 'Space Opera', which is confirmed by the article on the Abh on the relevant wiki.
Space Opera isn't known for the hardness of its science, so if you want a handwave-y answer on the optimal humanoid design for deep space travel you've already got one. A harder science approach would probably get too tied up in the small details to make a good story.
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2019-03-02, 07:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2007
Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
I'd have to recommend "Packing for Mars" by Mary Roach, which mostly deals with human issues in space. It gives you a long list of why humans might need these adaptations and why. Note that I don't assume any of these would be natural adaptations and instead something cooked up in a CRISPR-like system.
Low gravity (skeletal/muscular): presumably some means for adapting to exercise quicker than current humans. Don't forget inner ear issues and potential for space sickness.
High gravity. Presumably most of the issues would be to have the muscular system adapt like a natural g-suit. Presumably allowing compression of arteries to direct blood where critical, and possibly vein valves in arteries. Potentially might include different eye material for "inverse g" survivability.
Excretion/digestion. Null-g plumbing remains an unsolved problem, and biological help might be needed/useful in the far future. Foods prepared for ISS need to be designed with the space toilets in mind, as well as anything to do with astronaut nutrition and morale (hot sauce is about the only thing they can taste after awhile, this might need to change as well).
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2019-03-02, 08:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Wait. Hot sauce? Gravity affects taste?
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2019-03-03, 04:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
I hadn't heard about this, so I looked it up and it's apparently true: NASA link.
As I understand it, one hypothesis is that fluid tends to build up in the head and sinuses, much like a cold, thus your sense of tastes is dampened in the same way. Other competing hypotheses by astronauts include that they're eating the same food every day (likely), to that food is prepared months in advance and therefore loses its flavour (less likely, but debatable depending on how the food was prepared - from personal experience, rat packs / MREs aregoodretain taste for years).
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2019-03-03, 06:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
The Gargantia anime has an interesting premise where humanity is fighting space monsters then turns out that said space monsters are
Spoiler
Humans who long ago performed heavy genetic manipulation of giant squids so they could not only survive in the void of space but also each carry and keep alive one human inside who was also in control.
Also able to absorb solar energy which is pretty much the only reliable energy source in space.
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2019-03-03, 10:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Last edited by Sermil; 2019-03-03 at 10:27 PM.
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2019-03-04, 06:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Yeah, but when I said humans adapted in space, I meant kinda like this:
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2019-03-05, 07:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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2019-03-05, 08:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
They are clearly storage for all those redistributed bodily fluids. Like camel hums
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2019-03-06, 05:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Human adaptations to living in space?
Ok. yeah. I don't get it. Doesn't she look perfectly normal. Except for the blue hair.
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2019-03-06, 05:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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