Science: Journey into Space

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Pressure suits will improve, say the space doctors, but not enough to permit their wearers to work freely in a vacuum for long periods of time. Dr. Fritz Haber of the School of Space Medicine believes that the whole space-suit idea will have to be abandoned. If space men want to float around outside their space ship (as they did in the movie, Destination Moon), they will have to stay inside rigid cylinders and do their work by remote-control devices operated from inside.

One thing the space doctors are sure of: human bodies and nervous systems resent fluctuations of gravity. Moderate increases are not too bad if they do not last long. The crews of Von Braun's shuttle rockets would have to withstand nine "Gs" (nine times normal gravity) for brief periods as they left the earth. They could survive by lying on their backs on contour couches, say the space doctors, but they would not enjoy it.

When the rocket's power cuts off and it orbits freely in space, the crew would feel no gravity at all. In this "zero gravity field," they could neither stand nor sit unless held firmly in position. If they tried to sleep in bunks, the slightest motion would flip them out. The jet effect of even gentle breathing would waft them across the cabin.

The probable effect of zero gravity on the human nervous system is far more serious. The nervous system, says Dr. H. Strughold, head of the School of Space Medicine, was designed to work on the surface of the earth in a gravity field of one G. How would the rocket crew feel while the rocket was accelerating? They would lie barely conscious on their contoured G-couches. At this stage the rocket would be under automatic control; the men, weighing nine times normal, would not be capable of any action at all. With the power cut off and the rocket coasting upward, gravity would drop to zero. The men would be expected to rise from their beds of pain (not knowing which end is up) and perform navigation feats that would tax a professor of celestial mechanics. Dr. Strughold does not think they could work at peak form; they would be lucky to accomplish anything.

Meteors & Rays. There are other, outside hazards as a space ship soars out of the shelter of earth's atmosphere. From the sun comes a blast of fierce ultraviolet rays which turn glass black. Ordinary light and heat from the sun are also terrors of space. Most surfaces, especially metals, exposed to the sun above the atmosphere get too hot for comfort. Laboratory calculations show that sunlit aluminum will reach 802° F., well above its softening point.

Another, and the least known, terror of space is cosmic rays. These mysterious particles, voyaging across the universe at nearly the speed of light, are normally gentled by the atmosphere before they reach the earth's surface. Men in space would feel their full fury. No shield is effective against them, and certain types leave streaks of dead cells when they pass through living tissue.