Space Medicine and Astrobiology

Abstract

The extraordinary nature of the problems with which the life sciences are faced in manned space flight is distinguished by the following features:

• 1. The environment in space is characterized by the absence of a life-supporting, life-protecting, and flight-supporting atmosphere.

• 2. To travel through such a vacuum environment requires a sealed cabin, a synthetic little earth with an artificial atmosphere, surrounded by a hull having life-protecting capabilities with regard to radiations and meteorites.

• 3. The astronauts occupying this isolated island in space represent, psychologically, a world of their own.

• 4. The physical environments on the target celestial bodies are qualitatively and quantitatively different from that of the astronauts’ home planet, the Earth, which requires special biotechnical measures for their survival.

• 5. They may discover on target celestial bodies another living world with a strange, exotic flora and fauna, which may pose important problems of useful and harmful biotic interrelations, such as contamination.

• 6. During the larger part of the space flight trajectory, the vehicle itself behaves like a celestial body following the laws of celestial mechanics. This condition, and the transformation of an earthly machine into a celestial body and its retransformation into an aerodynamic vehicle, and also the gravities found on the targets, such as the Moon and Mars, subject the astronaut, who is basically a 1-g creature, to a large spectrum of G-forces from zero to multiples of one g.