The Refined Geek

New scientific discoveries get me excited, they really do. After discovering the awesome Science Daily I found myself losing hours in research papers that show cased everything from new discoveries with great potential to good old fashioned applications of science that were already producing benefits for everyone involved. Of course it gets a whole lot more exciting when that science is being conducted on an entirely different planet so you can imagine my excitement when I heard that Curiosity had discovered something amazing, something that had could have been “history in the making”.

It’s one thing for space and science nuts like me to get excited about these kinds of things, we usually know what to expect and the confirmation of it is what gets us all giddy, but its another thing entirely for the rest of the world to start getting excited about it. You see what started out as a couple posts on my feed reader with a couple scientists on the Curiosity team eventually mutated into dozens and when I saw that Australian TV programs were covering it I knew that it had gotten out of hand. It’s not that this was wholly unexpected, the public interest in Curosity has been the highest I’ve seen since the Spirit and Opportunity first touched down on Mars, but I knew that this fever pitch over the potential ground breaking news would inevitably lead to public disappointment no matter how significant the find was.

To put it in perspective Curiosity has a very distinct set of capabilities, most of them targeted towards imaging and the study of the composition of the things it comes across. Much of the speculation I read about Curiosity’s find centred around the idea that it had detected life in some form or another which would truly be earth shattering news. However Curiosity just isn’t set up to do that in the way most people think it is as its microscopes are simply not capable of imaging microbes directly. The only way it could detect signs of life would be through the on-board laboratory using its mass spectrometer, gas chromatograph and laser spectrometer and even then it would only detect organic compounds (like methane) which is a good, but not certain, indication of life.

Unfortunately whilst the scientists had done their best to try and down play what the result might actually be the damage has been done as the public’s expectations are wildly out of alignment with what it could actually be. It’s annoying as it doesn’t help the image of the greater scientific community when things like this happen and it’s unfortunately become a semi-regular occurrence. I can really blame the scientists for this one, they really are working on a historic mission that will further our understanding of Mars and many other things, but care has to be taken to avoid these kinds of situations in the future. Hopefully the media will also refrain from sensationalising science to the point where the story no longer matches the reality, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

For what its worth though I’m still looking forward to whatever it is they found out we’re still only in the beginning of Curiosity’s mission, meaning there’s plenty more science to be done and many more discoveries to be had. Whilst they might not be the amazing things that the media might have speculated them to be they will still be exciting for the scientific community and will undoubtedly further our understanding in many different areas. Hopefully this will be the only PR debacle of Curiosity’s mission as I’d hate to have to write a follow up post.

Getting back down from orbit is no easy task, even when you’re doing it under ideal conditions. This can be made even more complex if the return is due to some form of emergency that has forced your hand and because of this NASA looked into many different ways of getting astronauts back down to earth. One of them, called the MOOSE (and no I’m not making this up), was essentially a system that would allow a spacesuit equipped astronaut to essentially space dive back down to earth, all contained in something not much larger than a suit case. Whilst we’ve settled on the more sane option of using the proven Soyuz capsules that doesn’t mean our obsession with leaping back down to earth from ever increasing heights has subsided and today brings us a new record in that area.

Early this morning, after several weather delays due to high winds in the Roswell area, Felix Baumgartner of the Red Bull Stratos project jumped from his platform suspended tenuously under a giant helium balloon. For the next 4 minutes and 19 seconds Felix was in complete freefall as he rocketed towards earth hitting speeds of 1137KM/h, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier unassisted. A total of 9 minutes and 3 seconds after he stepped off the platform some 39KMs he touched back down on earth and waltzed right into several world records.

It might surprise you to know that Felix actually broke records today, ones that have stood uncontested for over 50 years. Back in the late 1950′s the United States Air Force needed to test new parachute systems that they designed for pilots who would be ejecting at high speed in some of the newly constructed high altitude craft. Thus they created Project Excelsior (again not making this up) which was essentially a series of high altitude jumps from helium balloons to test said parachutes. As part of this Captain Joseph Kittinger set many records with his jump from 31KM up and actually still holds the record for longest free fall at 4 minutes and 36 seconds as Felix’s higher speed cut down on his fall time dramatically.

It’s also worth noting that Kittinger is a consultant on the Stratos project, all those years after he set those records.

Both Kittinger and Baumgartner’s weren’t exactly trouble free events with both of them suffer issues that could have been cause to abort the missions. Kittinger for instance suffered a loss of pressure around his right hand during the ascent which made it swell up to twice its regular size (an incredibly painful thing to have happen to you). There is of course a very easy solution to this however Kittinger held off on informing base command until after he had completed his jump. Felix on the other hand had problems with the heater in his visor causing it to fog up several times. This could be very dangerous as obscured vision could have led to him not being able to tell if he was in a spin or not, something which did actually happen during his descent. He recovered quickly however and the rest of the descent down was completed as expected.

Whilst the primary purpose of the Red Bull Stratos project was always to break records (something I mentioned 2 years ago when I first talked about this project) there are some notable gains for science as well. The data gathered from the descent will be used to design the next generation of full pressure suits that will be used by high altitude pilots and astronauts. The helium balloon used is also the largest one that has even been constructed and the insights gained into creating it will help with other balloon based projects. There’s also the incredible amount of press that this jump has generated which will (hopefully) help inspire the next generation.

My congratulations goes out to Felix and his entire team at the Red Bull Stratos project as what they’ve achieved today is simply incredible and they have shown that records that have stood for decades are just waiting to be broken. Whilst we probably won’t see a repeat performance for some time I can help but think of the possibilities for what will come next as at 39KM up you’re pretty much at the limit of balloon technology. The only step after that is getting into territory where a lot of innovation will be required and I really do hope there’s people out there considering it, even if just for the record breaking attempt. We humans are an incredibly capable bunch and with feats like this I’m incredibly proud to be a member of such an amazing species.

Cast your mind back 5 months, where were you then? I can remember where I was quite clearly: I was in a hotel room in a city called Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei. With nothing much else to do in town apart from drink coffee and swelter in the unrelenting heat I had made myself comfortable on the bed with my laptop and tenuous Internet connection so that I could witness history in the making. It was there that I saw SpaceX’s Dragon capsule being captured by the crew aboard the International Space Station and brought to dock with the ISS, becoming the first ever private craft to do so.

SpaceX, not wanting to falter with their goal of being able to rapidly turn around craft, has today achieved the same feat again and the very first of their official missions, dubbed CRS-1 (Commercial Resupply Service), has just docked at the ISS. Just like its predecessor the payload its taking up isn’t anything to get excited about being mostly crew supplies, materials for new and current experiments as well as hardware for ongoing maintenance of the station itself. Just like its predecessor it will also be bringing back some payload back with it once its completed its 2 week mission attached to the ISS, something which is still a unique capability of the Dragon capsule.

Whilst the mission might be fairly rudimentary its launch has been anything but. Those of us who tuned into the launch live stream on Monday were treated to a pretty spectacular show due to the launch happening at night. There was also a curious incident where one of the engines appeared to suffer some kind of failure with many news outlets reporting that one of the engines on the Falcon 9 had exploded during the first stage. The failure didn’t appear to affect the launch however with the comms chatter saying everything was nominal and with the Dragon arriving successfully you can’t really fault them.

In fact the “explosion” was actually part of a system designed to relieve pressure in the engine bay when an engine out occurred. The system was triggered as the control systems aboard the Falcon 9 detected a loss of pressure in engine 1 and shut down the engine which lead to those panels being ejected in a rather spectacular fashion. To put this all in perspective the Falcon 9 can make it into orbit with 2 of its engines failing in this fashion and for many of the previous missions it has actually throttled down 2 of its engines because the additional thrust isn’t required. Thus whilst this was unexpected it was not a situation that they hadn’t accounted for and it was actually a great demonstration of the Falcon 9′s engine out capability, something which is currently unique to it (other launchers, which are no longer flying, have had this functionality).

A separate payload that wasn’t part of the CRS-1 mission is the prototype satellite for Orbcomm which was released once the Falcon 9 entered its second stage of flight. Whilst the payload was successfully released it was unfortunately dropped into the wrong orbit, much lower than the one required. Officials have stated that this was due to the engine out causing the other 8 engines to compensate, making them burn for longer than what was originally calculated for. Whilst they might be able to salvage it using the onboard propellant (which will reduce the useful life of the craft significantly) it’s still something of a faux pas on SpaceX’s part. I’m sure that for the next lot of flights it won’t be an issue as SpaceX has a phenomenal track record for fixing this problems as soon as they become apparent.

Despite these issues it’s still a great achievement for SpaceX to go from first dock to the ISS to being an official re-supplier all within the space of 5 months. Whilst they won’t make the deadlines that they originally had planned for this year (CRS-2 has slipped to be no earlier than January 2013) they’re still moving at a blistering pace compared to nearly all other players in the space industry. For now they’ll be slipping into the routine of launching cargo missions but it won’t be long before they start sending people up alongside the cargo and that’s an incredibly exciting prospect.

Even though I don’t get suckered into conspiracy theories since I’m usually only a couple Google searches away from finding the facts I do find the dissection of them quite interesting. One of my favourites are Unidentified Flying Objects as for the most part they’re easily explained by natural phenomena or people mistaking things like illumination flares used in night training for various jet craft. What always fascinated me though was the idea of flying saucers as once I understood the idea of an aerofoil I was always fascinated by how one would actually work and if would even be feasible.

As it so happens it is and the USA put a lot of effort into developing one:

The aircraft, which had the code name Project 1794, was developed by the USAF and Avro Canada in the 1950s. One declassified memo, which seems to be the conclusion of initial research and prototyping, says that Project 1794 is a flying saucer capable of “between Mach 3 and Mach 4,” (2,300-3,000 mph) a service ceiling of over 100,000 feet (30,500m), and a range of around 1,000 nautical miles (1,150mi, 1850km).

As far as we can tell, the supersonic flying saucer would propel itself by rotating an outer disk at very high speed, taking advantage of the Coandă effect. Maneuvering would be accomplished by using small shutters on the edge of the disc (similar to ailerons on a winged aircraft). Power would be provided by jet turbines. According to the cutaway diagrams, the entire thing would even be capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL).

The Coandă Effect is an interesting phenomenon and its likely that you’ve encountered it before. In essence the effect is the tendency of a fluid jet, which is anything with a nozzle that has a medium shooting out of it, to be attracted to surfaces that it passes by. If you’ve ever been to Questacon or similar places you’ve probably seen the ball that hovers in mid air which seems counter-intuitive because the air is blowing out at an angle. This same effect is what can be used to make a flying saucer fly and according to the declassified documents the performance of such a craft would have been fairly impressive for the time.

To put those numbers in perspective one of the most iconic craft, the SR-71 Blackbird, was introduced nearly a decade after this project apparently begun and whilst it might have a range that’s 3 times greater than this theoretical craft the rest of the specifications are either on par or lower than it. Just the service ceiling on it alone would make it a highly valuable strategic craft but the ability to move at up to Mach 4 speeds would have made it immune to nearly all forms of anti-aircraft weaponry available at the time. Whether or not one of these craft was actually built is a question that has not yet been answered but considering that all the documents haven’t been released yet its possible we’ll know more as time goes on.

What I find really fascinating though is whilst the Coandă effect can be used for such exotic craft like the one pictured above it also has many uses in traditional aircraft, helicopters and even in air conditioning. Many large short take-off and landing aircraft make use of the effect to provide a smooth ride at low flying speeds. NOTAR style helicopters use the effect in place of a tail rotor to provide the counter rotational force required to stop them from spinning on the spot. When I started writing this I thought it was some kind of esoteric effect that didn’t have many practical uses but as it turns out it’s pretty much a very well understood and useful phenomenon.

Whilst I know this won’t stop the UFO enthusiasts from saying that the really truly saw one for me the simple fact that the USA was working on such a craft is enough to chalk up any sightings of it to a possible prototype of a craft like this, It might not have gotten past the planning stage but since there are other known craft like this out there (like the VZ-9 Avrocar mentioned in the article I linked earlier) you really have to be a special kind of crazy to keep on thinking that we’re being visited by extraterrestrials travelling in Coandă effect planes.

Want to feel really insignificant for a bit?

I don’t know what it is but things like the galaxy IC1101, VY Canis Majoris and all other heavenly bodies that are just beyond anything that I’m capable of imagining captivate me completely. I think it’s probably due to the possibilities that arise from such scale. Just think about it, if one planet in one lonely solar system was able to produce a species like us what kind of life could have formed in these other places. Could it even happen? Would we be able to recognise it if we saw it? The possibilities are nearly endless and that, for me at least, is wildly fascinating.

It’s that desire to find out what’s out there that fuels my passion for transhumanist ideals. Whilst many will argue that ageing and death are a natural part of life that should not be circumvented I instead ask why you want to limit your experience to one life time, especially when the universe is so vast as to provide nearly limitless opportunities for those who wish to explore it.

Some find that incomprehensible scale intimidating, I find it invigorating.

There’s been something of a goal shift within the space industry recently. For quite a long time the focus was on returning to the moon and establishing a presence there which was born out of George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. However since then the goals of NASA, and indeed the goals of the most promising private space company, have shifted from going back to where we once visited to charting a course to virgin territory. Whilst its entirely possible that both NASA and SpaceX are just looking to capitalize on the attention that’s been focused on the Mars Curiosity Rover by announcing plans to send humans to our red sister there’s no denying that both of them are seriously considering the idea and it seems NASA might be looking at some rather radical ideas.

There’s been quite a lot of talk about what the best way to get to Mars would be and most of them involve a way station of some sort, something close to Earth that we can use as a staging ground whilst we prepare for the actual mission. The ideas have ranged from simply using the International Space Station to establishing a base on the moon. NASA has recently started investigating the idea of putting a base out at L-2 (Lagrange Point 2), beyond the orbit of the moon. Such a base would provide quite a few advantages and not just to potential manned missions to Mars.

You see the Lagrange points are special places where the gravitational effects of all the nearby bodies balances out so that you don’t really need to do a heck of a lot to remain there indefinitely. That’s quite desirable because it means you have to take up less station keeping equipment and fuel with you, making room for bigger and better payloads. It’s for this (and numerous other reasons) that the Hubble successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be placed at L-2. There’s also one other advantage to L-2 as well and that’s the fact that you don’t need very much energy to get anywhere in our solar system once you’re there, especially if you time it right and get some lovely gravitational boosts along the way.

Putting a station there and maintaining it would be no small feat however. At L-2 you’re well outside the  protective magnetic field of Earth which means that any potential space station has to be heavily shielded against the solar winds and cosmic radiation that will bombard it relentlessly. This either means a much smaller single launch station (ala Salyut and Skylab) or multiple successive launches. It’s not an insurmountable task but it’s definitely a step up from the ISS in terms of complexity and investment required. The L-2 location also makes getting to and from the station much more complicated than getting to the ISS or even the moon and that raises questions about how to handle things like emergency situations and resupply flights. Again there’s no technical limitation to this but you’re well into envelope pushing territory when you’re working out a L-2.

At the same time though I do believe that if you’re considering a base at L-2 you’d also better consider doing something similar on the moon, especially if landing on other planets is your end goal. You see we do have quite a bit of experience in building space stations and a base at L-2 would be an organic progression of that. However what we don’t have is any experience in building habitats on the surface of other planets and the moon, with its lack of atmosphere and harsh environment, would be an amazing test bed for potential habitats on other planets. This is not to say that a moon base is better than something at L-2, they both have their pros and cons, just that if L-2 is a consideration then the place 1.5 million kms before it might not be a bad idea either.

I think the most exciting thing to come out of all of this is the fact that NASA is investigating some things which really are pushing the limits of our capabilities in space. I’ve long said that this is where they need to be focused as the private space industry has shown that they’re quite capable of doing the day to day stuff which should leave NASA’s budget free to do some really incredible stuff. With that finally happening I could not be happier as it means that we’re not that far off from becoming an interplanetary species.

In principle, at least.

Things like this never fail to bring me to tears:

It’s not the most original video on the planet (or off, as the case might be) but it’s probably one of the most memorable ones of these edge of space type deals. The train’s face is CGI but the rest of it is completely real, done in a process that can be replicated on the cheap if you know what you’re doing. There are however a couple nits that I like to pick about videos like these mostly around what people tend to classify as “space”.

The international defined standard for being in space and not in Earth’s atmosphere is defined as 100KM above sea level, referred to as the Kármán line. The most exotic of helium ballons will only manage to make it about halfway to that point before bursting and falling back down to earth. Whilst the atmosphere at those heights wouldn’t support life for any length of time and you can clearly see the curvature of the Earth it’s not in space unless you’re past that point. Even saying you’re at the edge of the space is a little on the nose, but I’ll usually let that slide.

Despite all that I still love videos like this as they really put the whole world in perspective. That feeling has a name too, the overview effect, which many astronauts have reported feeling upon seeing the Earth from space or on the lunar surface. It’s my hope (and running bet with a friend) that I’ll one day see the earth from that perspective too.

I usually reserve these kinds of things for a quick tweet or Facebook post but I figured it was time I actually explained the creation of these particular videos. Shown below for your viewing pleasure is yet another Curiosity descent video that makes for some incredible watching:

For starters the first thing I’ll let you in on is that all the sound you hear in this video is 100% fake as Curiosity does not have a microphone on board. That may seem strange, I mean what camera that can take video doesn’t have one, but they’ve launched craft to Mars with microphones before (the Mars Polar Lander was one, although it was tragically lost, with the Phoenix Lander being one that actually made it) and the recordings made back then weren’t particularly interesting. Most of the noise that they recorded was akin to static and really didn’t have much use scientifically so future Mars craft like Curiosity don’t carry them so they can use the payload space for more experiments. Additionally the actual sound would probably be a lot more harsh (ever heard a microphone in high wind?) as at this stage Curiosity was rocketing towards Mars at a pretty decent rate.

The original video, shown here, is based off the images from the MARDI camera that’s on the bottom of the rover specifically for this purpose. Now I’ve heard differing reports as to what the actual frame rate was as the original video says it’s somewhere on the order of 2 FPS (297 images over 150 seconds) but most are quote as saying its 4FPS. The imager itself is capable of doing up to 10FPS but I don’t believe it was for this particular video. How then, you might be wondering, do they manage to get something like 20 FPS like the video does above? Well the original video is probably the best candidate for something called Video Interpolation (or inbetweening as its usually referred to).

In essence the additional frames are generated from the frames either side of it and the algorithms are essentially guessing what’s going to come next. For the MARDI images this works quite well as the amount of change between frames is quite low and thus the interpolation between frames looks quite good.  Most of the better ones of these also have a lot of hand work with them as well to smooth out some things (like the heat shield falling motion). If there’s a lot of action between frames you tend to get smudging  which you can actually see hints of in the video (look at the landscape shifting about as it gets closer). It works on any kind of video too and a lot of enterprising YouTubers use it in order to get that slow motion effect without having to spend the untold thousands on high speed video cameras.

I find the videos interesting both because of what they are (technical achievements in both their creation and interpolation) and what they represent to us as species. The response to the Curiosity videos has been nothing short of amazing and it makes me so happy to see so many being inspired by it. It’s things like this that spur on the next generation to become the kinds of people capable of making things like this and it never fails to impress me time and time again.

Whilst scientists and engineers aren’t the most superstitious of people emergent, inexplicable patterns can still make them uneasy in much the same way. The Mars Curse is one such pattern that has seen half of the missions that were destined for our red sister fail in some way, either in transport or shortly after arriving at their destination. You can then imagine the tension that the Mars Science Laboratory (commonly known as the Curiosity rover) team experienced as they started to make their final approach to Mars, especially considering how complicated their landing had to be. Yesterday saw the rover touch down safely on the Martian surface, much to the joy of everyone involved and those of us who were watching on.

For the first couple of days Curiosity is going to be spending most of its time validating systems and ensuring that communications back to Earth are stable. For those of you who were watching the live feed those first few images we saw came via the Mars Odyssey orbiter, the very same orbiter that’s responsible for relaying all the data from them previous generation of Mars rovers. Curiosity has the capability to deliver a lot more data than those two little rovers combined and whilst Odyssey could relay that back it’s much more advantageous to use the higher bandwidth connection on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter even if it has to cache the data before sending it (hence why the MRO didn’t beam the first pictures back, it would’ve taken too long).

All of the pictures we’ve seen so far have been from underneath the rover and that’s primarily due to the system verification that’s taking place. The images come from the hazard cameras mounted on the underside of Curiosity and traditionally they’ll be used to identify potential obstacles so that the rover can navigate around them. This is why they’re not colour nor particularly high resolution but the good news is that Curiosity has probably the most impressive imaging hardware of any rover to date just waiting to be turned on. Probably the most exciting part about Curiosity’s main camera is the fact that it will be able to capture true colour images, something that past rovers have had to fudge with coloured filters and post processing (which get close, but aren’t true to life).

Curiosity’s mission is to investigate Mar’s past and see how conducive to life it might have been. It’s not directly looking for life on Mars, that kind of mission would require a whole other set of dedicated tools, but what it’s looking for are what we believe are the precursors for life as we know it. Additionally Curiosity will asses Mars’ current and past meteorological conditions, both for pure scientific reasons and also to provide information to possible future manned missions to Mars, something which SpaceX has expressed a keen interest in accomplishing within the next decade. Considering the size of the total payload, almost 900KG, I’m sure it will have no trouble accomplishing its primary mission and quite possibly much more thereafter.

Curiosity’s power source is a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator that’s quite capable of powering the rover for its planned 1 Martian year mission. Now whilst it might not have the solar panels of its predecessors its internal generator is good for 14 years at up to 80% of its peak power production meaning that Curiosity could well give Spirit and Opportunity a run for their money in terms of longevity. Considering just how many instruments are aboard this rover I can see an extended mission proving extremely valuable both in scientific terms as well as becoming the next symbol of NASA’s prowess when it comes to building amazing machines.

A friend of mine asked me this morning if I still had a smile on my face courtesy of NASA and in all honesty I did. I shed a tear when I heard the words “touch down” and shared in the revelry that went on in the Mission Support Area via the NASA TV live feed and just writing that sentence out was enough to bring back the feeling of excitement and joy I felt back then. Curiosity’s mission has only just begun but I can’t help but feel that its been a major success for all involved and I eagerly look forward to everything that this giant rover has to bring us.

It’s a great time for science, space and humanity.

Life on Earth evolved in a never ending battle to be the most well adapted species to its environment. Consequently it can be said that the life forms that evolved here on Earth are specialist biological machines with certain requirements that must be met in order for them to thrive. It then comes as no surprise that entire species can be wiped out by small changes to their environment as their specific adaptations no longer provide them the advantage that they require. However there’s one particular pressure that all life has evolved with that, at least for most life, will never change: gravity.

Many biological processes rely on gravity in order to function correctly and for the longest time it was thought that no life that evolved here on Earth could survive a zero/microgravity environment for long. Indeed medical doctors back on the Mercury program were very sure that the second their astronauts went into orbit their vision would blur, rendering them incapable of performing any tasks. The truth of the matter is whilst we’re designed to work well in our standard 1G environment our bodies can cope quite well with microgravity environments for extended periods of time, provided certain precautions are taken.

What’s truly fascinating to watch though is how other creatures function without the aide of a constant gravitic pull. Indeed quite a lot of science done aboard the International Space Station has been centred around studying these effects on varying levels of creatures and some have produced very interesting results. For example spiders sent up to the ISS don’t spin webs like their Earth bound relatives do, they instead weave what looks like a tangled mess all over their environment. It would seem that their sense of direction heavily relies on figuring out which was is down and absent that their webs lose their usual symmetry.

Other animal species seem to adapt rapidly to the loss of gravity’s unrelenting effects. Mummichogs, a type of small fish, appear to be quite hardy little creatures in microgravity environments. They suffer some initial confusion but after a short while they appear to be quite capable of swimming perfectly well in microgravity. Ants too seem to adapt rapidly to the loss of gravity with their nests taking on an almost surreal structure that is not like anything you’ll see on Earth. The habitat that NASA designed to take ants into space is also quite incredible being a clear blue gel that contains everything the ants need to survive both the trip up and life aboard the space station.

Incredibly some species appear to be  better suited to microgravity than the regular 1G environment on Earth.  C. Elegans, a type of unsegmented worm, not only adapted to life in space but showed a marked increase in life span over their earth bound cousins. The cause appears to be a down-regulation of certain genes associated with muscle ageing which in turn leads to a longer life. Whether the same genes could be down-regulated in humans is definitely an area for investigation but as everyone knows us humans are far more complicated beasts than the simple  C. Elegan.

Indeed whilst muscle atrophy is one of the biggest problems facing astronauts who spend a long time in space there are several more concerns that also need to be addressed. Unlike the C. Elegan we humans have an internal skeleton and absent the effects of gravity it tends to deteriorate in much the same way as it does in bed ridden patients and people with osteoporosis. Additionally whilst the ISS is still within the protective magnetic field of Earth it’s still subject to much higher levels of radiation than what we get here on Earth which poses significant health risks over the long term. There’s also a whole swath of things that don’t quite work as intended (burping in microgravity is fraught with danger) which we’re still working on solutions for but suffice to say if we’re ever going to colonize space reproducing the effects of gravity is going to be one of the most critically required technologies.

It’s not often that we get the opportunity to effectively remove a unyielding constant and then study how much it influenced the development of life here on Earth. This is one of the reasons why space based research is so important, it gives us clues and insights into how dependent our biological processes are on certain key variables. Otherwise we’d figure that gravity was simply a requirement for life when now we know that life can survive, and even thrive, in its absence.