Us In Space
Us In Space
Contents
Getting There
The “R” Word
Our True Measure
Us Among The Stars
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Remember the hibernation pods in the movie Alien?
Experts believe we could be testing such long-flight hibernation within the next 10 years.
Time spent in transit on long-duration space trips is just one of the things we’ll need to plan for as we make our move into space.
Getting There
Hibernating astronauts on a year-long trip to Mars would not need to eat or drink, and would require far less oxygen. Cost reduction, plus no need to keep occupied during those 12 months?
Count us in.
There are other benefits.
Bodies of hibernating astronauts might waste away much less than the bodies of those awake in microgravity. Upon arrival, these hibernators would thus be fit and ready to commence challenging activities and exploration almost straight away.
It’s called a torpor state, and it’s like a pause button for the physical processes we’d want to put on hold during a long trip.
Additionally, the slowed-down cells of a hibernating body might not be damaged by radiation—one of the biggest health concerns of long-duration space missions.
The “R” Word
As far as challenges to space exploration go, radiation will be one of the biggest. If not the biggest.
Even as we advance all the other tech that will be needed to launch lots of things far and away into the solar system, to get them here and there super fast with minimal fuss, making space travel a snap …
True colonization and long-term exposure will face this last, quite significant hurdle.
You may have heard of rems and rads when it comes to measuring death rays; the standard we go by these days is the sievert, which is a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed by the body.
It’s usually stated in millisieverts, or mSv, and NASA has an upper limit on how much astronauts are allowed to be exposed to over the course of their career.
After surpassing that limit they’re no longer allowed into space.
It’s that critical.
Radiation messes big time with our DNA. We’re not designed for the harsh reality of space. (Did we say that already?) We like it right here inside the protective bubble of Mother Earth’s embrace, where her super-jacked magnetosphere blocks most of the harmful solar and cosmic rays that would otherwise ruin us.
Like all other major obstacles, therefore, radiation is a biggie we’ll need to solve.
But, and again, there’s this one thing we humans do very well:
Solve challenges.
We’re pretty dang great at it, actually.
Possibilities
One promising solution, one that’s already been tested quite a bit, is gene replacement. If we were able to simply replace damaged genes as they’re broken we could reduce, if not eliminate, the effects of otherwise deadly radiation.
Heard of CRISPR? Clustered Regularly InterSpaced Palindromic Repeats?
“Ah! Yes,” we hear you nodding thoughtfully, as you scratch your chin. “Clustered Regularly Inter … yes, yes, of course. That thing.”
Don’t worry. We’re with you.
CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that made lots of headlines a few years back. In short, it makes it possible to correct errors in the genome and turn on or off genes in cells and organisms quickly, cheaply, and with relative ease.
Which could include rapid repair of radiation damage.
(A palindrome, by the way, is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards.)
Shielding on our ships and our bases and our space suits will help, of course, and will no doubt always be used, but what if we could simply “fix” ourselves on the fly, undoing damage as it occurs?
Such a feat would quickly eliminate that one, huge barrier to a life in space.
Our True Measure
Forgive us as we segue to a more esoteric factor when it comes to us in space.
The thing that makes us … us.
Call it a knot of neurons, call it a mind, call it our consciousness, our personality—we’re talking here about the thing that truly is who we are. Not how tall or how old, but who we are.
The real us.
Bodies define us; our spirit is what moves us.
The Prime Mover Unmoved
Sure, the guy who can beat everyone arm wrestling might also be the guy who builds a civilization, but the fulfillment of that amazing dream (civilization building, not arm-wrestling trophies) doesn’t happen simply because he has a killer grip.
Humanity’s greatest achievements come from the application of thought, imagination, intelligence. The real us.
The real “us” is what directs the force that gets things done.
Can we measure that fundamental cause? The “prime mover unmoved”, to give it a name? Our conscious awareness? The thing from which all else springs? The genesis of all creation; the “me” in each of us that dreams and then makes the world?
IQ is the way we measure intelligence. Intelligence may or may not be the best way to codify that intangible force of inception we each represent, but it works well enough.
It’s all we have at the moment.
So, let’s take a look.
Our Greater Spectrum?
Actually, let’s stretch those mighty minds of ours and imagine what an even broader scale of IQ might look like.
Are the numbers we use to measure IQ all there is?
Does it truly represent the pinnacle of what’s possible?
What would an intelligence beyond those ranges look like?
What if the IQ band is actually far wider?
We can use the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum as a comparison. In the EM spectrum visible light occupies a small sliver of possible wavelengths.
For most of our human existence that narrow range was all we were aware of.
Visible light was all we could perceive. No one knew of microwaves or infrared. Couldn’t feel them, couldn’t sense them. X-rays? Didn’t even have a name for that. A complete unknown.
Now, of course, we see just how much EM bandwidth exists. Ranges we need special instruments to measure. You may not be able to perceive the radio waves coming into your car, but with a “radio” you can hear them.
What if IQ has a similar phenomenon?
What if our current measure of intelligence is something like the visible light band? With ranges beyond our current perception? What if there are IQ “wavelengths” far above anything we’ve yet achieved?
Could there be a level of intelligence that makes our smartest geniuses look like slugs?
Zero is zero, let’s assume, so the IQ scale probably wouldn’t go down. Even in harder sciences, like Physics, absolute bottom-scale stuff exists. Absolute Zero as a temperature, for example, is a real thing. The state where nothing is moving.
There’s a theoretical upper limit too, but it’s way, way up there. You think the core of a star is hot? That’s an ice cube compared to the highest temperature theoretically possible.
Okay. Let’s diverge briefly; we hear you wondering.
That highest theoretical temperature is called the Planck temp, the theoretical upper limit for the measure of how hot stuff is, and it’s 100 million million million million million degrees.
Nothing should ever be able to be hotter than that. The reasons for that aren’t important here, and honestly the information itself probably isn’t either, but we know you’re curious (like us) so there you go.
And yes, that looks like we just got silly and typed “million” a bunch of times, but that’s actually the right number of millions.
Pretty dang hot.
Back to the topic at hand, what if our IQ scale is similar?
Could there be ultraviolet-scale IQ numbers?
Gamma-ray mega-geniuses?
That sort of conjecture at this stage of our development leads to nothing particularly useful, but it’s a fascinating thought exercise nonetheless.
What is our true measure?
When it comes to thought, creativity, understanding … how much might we truly be capable of?
How much can we achieve?
How high can we go?
Us Among The Stars
Ultimately, our objective is to be out there, living among the stars. How do we become more effective spacemen?
Whether we’re personally the ones to go or not, we, as a species, should at least be able to be out there. Much like, in the same way, we ourselves may never go to Fiji, but people should be able to go to Fiji.
Agreed?
How we humans do that (go to space, not Fiji) goes beyond simply getting there. Much will need to be done between now and then to prepare us for such a life, to increase our resilience to radiation and other factors, to toughen us against the things that will threaten us every minute of every day we’re away from the natural environments that nurture and sustain.
Earth is our home. This is where we thrive. These are the conditions we’ve evolved to expect, and until we find other places a lot like it, we’ll either have to adapt to the places we choose to live, adapt them to us, or live within environments we create.
As long as we’re human, the ‘human condition’ will be the thing we most urgently need to address.
But it’s worth it. Because remember:
Space is the answer.
Want to hear from us Friday mornings?
Every Friday our chief correspondent, Tai Rade (you’ll love her take on things), sends a recap of the week in space.
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