[Dormant] moved to [email protected]

10415 readers

1 users here now

This community is dormant, please find us at [email protected]

You can find the original sidebar contents below:

Rules

Be respectful and inclusive.
No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
Engage in constructive discussions.
Share relevant content.
Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Use appropriate language and tone.
Report violations.
Foster a continuous learning environment.

Picture of the Day

The Busy Center of the Lagoon Nebula

Related Communities

🔭 Science

🚀 Engineering

🌌 Art and Photography

Other Cool Links

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

149

The ISS is 'too clean', and it could be making astronauts sick (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

48 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary from elsewhere

The International Space Station (|SS) has low microbial diversity, which could lead to astronaut health issues, according to a study published in Cell.

Researchers found that the microbial communities resemble those found in sanitized environments like hospitals rather than natural settings.

Co-senior study author Pieter Dorrestein explains that increasing microbial exposure could improve astronaut health during long-term space travel.

The study suggests incorporating natural elements, like soil, into the ISS to enhance microbial diversity and astronaut well-being.

The study in question:

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00108-4

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (35 children)

Unpopular opinion, I know, but humans simply are not built for space. Trying to force this square peg into a round hole is such a tremendous waste of resources at this point.

I wish we could divert all of human space flight budget to automating probes. We’d be mining the asteroid belt by now. Once we have space-based automated manufacturing, then it will be the time to bring in the humans.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)

It's a scary word to use, but humanity does need some form of eugenics for space travel.

No, not the racial kind.

We need to breed resistance to radiation and adaption to low oxygen or low gravity environments.

We need to be able to be stuck in cramped quarters around other people for years without eventually killing each other.

We need to be able to be cryogenically frozen for long periods of time and then reanimated.

None of this is possible without fundamentally editing the genes of humans. We essentially need to evolve into a new species.

[–] tiddy 2 points 1 month ago

Or we could just like shield radiation, and provide oxygen/gravity.

Relying on evolution for this sounds like it'd take a couple millennium longer than just like a spinning slab of concrete with a rebreather inside.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (33 replies)