Subliminal
With the image from the "Girlfriend 'tried to MURDER ME" story directly above, I read this as a "pair of norks" to be selected
NASA and Roscosmos have decided on two veteran 'nauts for a prolonged one-year-long mission on the International Space Station. The Russian and US space agencies want to put a pair of spacefarers on the station for a prolonged duration to get more data on the effects of weightlessness on humans. NASA's Scott Kelly piloted …
Wouldn't it be better to send a man and woman aloft, rather than two men? That would allow them to see how zero gravity affects both men and women. And, so what if three come down? Might end up getting more data than they bargained for.
For that matter, in order to get a valid sample size, shouldn't they send six of each up?
Dave
P.S. Oh, yeah, I think they ought to send a 52 year old guy, and an 18 year old gal, just to get data across a range of ages. Makes sense, doesn't it?
P.P.S. Mine's the one with the parachute in the pocket. Eat your heart out Felix. ;-)
So what's the skinny on this being related to a Soyuz seat being taken by Sarah Brightman? I heard that she outbid NASA with the result that they have to skip a crew rotation. NASA is attempting to put a bright face on this by saying it's FOR SCIENCE!!!111oneoneone
NASA denies the story, of course, but then I wouldn't believe Fox news if it said the Atlantic was wet.
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2012/10/russia-sells-so.html
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=17384120
That sound you hear? It's the head of the Mars Society, Bob Zubrin's head exploding. Nothing seems to get that guy worked up quite so much as talking about year long missions in zero-g JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ASTRONAUTS.
Surely a better choice would be to set up some kind of centrifuge or tethered capsule to provide centrifugal gravity, send up two astronauts for a year, and then see what kind of shape they were in at the end of the year?
NASA started out with monkeys & dogs strapped into the chair, upgraded to people and found them much preferable because they didn't ask for so many treats...
"Surely a better choice would be to set up some kind of centrifuge or tethered capsule to provide centrifugal gravity, send up two astronauts for a year, and then see what kind of shape they were in at the end of the year?"
IIRC There *was* a plan to put a (small) centrifuge on the ISS big enough to study varying the level of g effects.
Not enough budget to get it built apparently.
Personally I'd suggest radiation effects mitigation and closed cycle life support will be *much* more effective enablers of trips to Mars. Of course if you could extend the techniques of long brain surgery (complete blood draining and low temperature till all brain activity and most metabolism seems to *cease*) from 12 hours to 12 months things could get interesting....