Re: Engineering Newsletter

[rddesign@wolfenet.com]

>ReplyTo   : Ric
>
>>In system travel should give us a good idea of how well people adapt to
>>space travel.  A few missions of longer and longer duration to near and then
>>farther planets would help to see the adaptiveness of humans to prolonged
>>space flight. By the time we sent some folks to Titan and back we could
>>refine the problem and work on means to sidestep these.
>
>Yes, that will give us a preview. But I think you don't have to wait for
>that: Imagine living and working in your own house, never allowed to open
>the door and go outside. When looking outside nothing happens, the stars
>almost don't change. How would you feel?
>How many people are there that can survive happely and healty in such an
>environment?
>Probably an important feature of the spacevessel would be that it feeled
>much like Earth's environment. This doesn't mean it should look the same,
>but several things like a leisure room, a bar, a garden of some sort (and
>maybe a swimming pool) also crew quarters should not be too small. In fact
>all kinds of things that would make the spaceship bigger and heavier would
>make living better.
>So the dilemmas are size and weight versus crew happyness and healthyness.
>The point is to make a spacevessel that feels like YOUR environment (home,
>work, shops).

Ric replies:

This is about like what I was saying many, many months ago. It wouldn't be
much different than life in a submarine. The spaces would be larger. The
number of people would be many more. There would be windows where as a
submarine doesn't. The only limiting factor for subs is the food issue. (
Take it with us or grow it along the way, eother one )  Humans are a pretty
addaptable animal. Look at how many different localities they inhabit on
this earth. The room to move about and jobs to do and time and places to
relax are importent to the mission. The Mir and Space Shuttle are OK for
short periods of time. For years and years you can't have enough space and
room. Hab modules with different "landscapes" and " cultures" would help
relieve boredom.

>>We are going to have to establish a solarsystem based society before we
>>would be able to convince anyone of the need to go anywhere else.
>
>So if we want to continue the SD project we should make it 2140 instead of
2040.

Very possibly

The best Beads come from RD Designs.
Ric & Denisse Hedman