For the first time in human history, we ordinary people have the opportunity to go to Mars, thanks to elon Musk's tenacious ambitions, he is building a powerful spaceship that will lead ordinary people through the distance between Earth and Mars, after several months of sailing to Mars. But Musk's company, Space x, had to find a way to protect travelers from microgravity on the go, which is why Space x came up with an artificial gravity starship, what kind of spaceship is this? How does it work?
Whether you think it's reckless or impossible to try to go to Mars, and Musk is advancing his own plan to bring humans from Earth to Mars and inhabit it permanently, which is the main reason he built the Gravity Starship, which is expected to become the most powerful it has ever been, it can carry people or cargo to Mars, and the Gravity Starship is unique in these ways.
It can lift more than 100 tons of material into orbit, which is very necessary, because the starship must transport a large amount of materials before the arrival of the Martian colonists, because Mars is a very harsh planet, and the materials will contain a living capsule that allows humans to keep the body system normal on Mars, and of course, a series of materials such as water and food necessary for humans. Space X will design the starship to consist of an upper and lower level, with the separated super-heavy booster returning to Earth, and the starship heading to Mars after refueling in orbit.
To save costs, both parts of the starship can be reused, the booster will return to land and quickly check and prepare for the next flight, this booster will be equipped with about 30 Raptor engines for propulsion, which was also designed and developed by Space X. After each mission, the upper level also re-enters Earth, which is protected by high-temperature resistant materials to prevent damage to the starship from the high temperatures generated when entering the atmosphere.
Space X plans to build about 1,000 such starships, launching at least 3 a day, which will allow Musk to quickly achieve his goal of landing 1 million people on Mars, of course, this starship is not only for landing on Mars, NASA also plans to use this starship in the next lunar mission, this spacecraft will send astronauts to the surface of the moon and send them back into orbit after completing the mission, in which the design of the starship undertaking cargo mission is relatively simple, but for the starship that undertakes to transport people, Some complex issues began to arise.
If it is a short trip to the moon, Space X does not have to worry about these problems, because the whole process is only a few days, but it takes up to several months to get from Earth to Mars, and in the environment that starship must pass, passengers will be exposed to harmful radiation, of course, this special problem can be solved by installing a protective shield on the starship, but the other problem is not so easy, which is the problem of weightlessness in space.
This is also a problem that has long plagued astronauts, for the astronauts of the International Space Station, in order to minimize the impact of weightlessness, they must insist on training on the International Space Station every day, even so, the astronauts who return to Earth are generally unable to walk when they return from their months-long mission, and they need to be carried out by the staff. You've probably seen a lot of movies about space travel, and you see a giant spacecraft where the actors can move around freely and even fight, but most of the time the movie ignores the weightlessness in the spacecraft.
This situation is not so simple in the real world space travel outside the movie, which must generate gravity on the starship to achieve the picture in the movie, which is also the problem of microgravity. The problem Space x must address when it comes to microgravity is the effect of microgravity on the human body, as explained by nasa's Director of Space Medicine and Healthcare Systems Office, where the incidence of bone loss in humans occurs at 1%-5% per month, which can lead to osteoporosis, which accelerates age-related changes.
The decline in bone density and strength is more pronounced in some skeletal areas, such as the pelvic bone, although most of the loss is reversible after returning to Earth, but being in a weightless state for a long time will also increase the risk of kidney stones and fractures, and staying in space for a long time will also affect the muscles, and the strength and endurance of the muscles will decline, especially for the muscles of the lower limbs. Coupled with the impact of microgravity on connective tissue and the intensity of demand for different activities, so that astronauts face the risk of fatigue and injury during prolonged weightlessness, proper exercise can effectively reduce bulk muscle atrophy, so we will see astronauts use bicycles and treadmills to apply downward pressure to stay healthy.
For this question, American astronaut Scott Kelly also said that he found it very difficult to adapt to the environment on Earth when he returned to Earth after a year on the space station. Because Musk wants the Martian community to be self-sufficient, he must ensure that the travelers who are transported there stay as healthy as possible, otherwise they will not survive even if they arrive on Mars because of physical health problems, and then they have to solve a problem, how to eliminate the impact of microgravity in space on the human body.
In fact, Musk is not the first to try to solve this problem, as early as 1903 as the father of rockets and spaceflight Goddard, put forward the idea of the earliest solution to microgravity, in his research report mentioned that in the outer space rocket device he proposed the use of rotational force in space to generate artificial gravity, since then many experts have also proposed different solutions for the space station and models such as von Braunlen, O'Neill Cylinder and Stanford Taurus, Some are even already considering implementing development.
For example, NASA's Nautilus space station, which will use rotating torus to provide artificial gravity, but each of these schemes has its own flaws, and in the starships That Musk is designing and building, some of which are so awkwardly shaped that they make launching difficult, while others are too heavy to use. At present, for Musk, the solution that can be well used with Space X's spacecraft is to use 3 starship systems flying together, which consists of two bridges to connect the main starship and the starships on both sides, the bridge can be automatically expanded as a wheel, and each starship is launched from the earth separately into space and then connected to make the main starship spin up, thus generating enough speed to simulate the gravity of the earth.
Specifically, the starships on both sides first adjust their direction and launch the thrusters to transmit kinetic energy to the wheels, and then the starships on both sides will adjust their direction again to face the main starship, and the centripetal force generated by the rotation of the wheels in the remaining journey, the people on the main starship will experience the feeling of being pulled down, thereby solving the problem of microgravity, and the next step, Musk will try to promote this solution to be realized as soon as possible. That is to say, if the problem of microgravity is solved, every ordinary human being will have the opportunity to land on Mars, I don't know if you guys want to go to Mars to live when the time comes?