He took stock of problems science encounters in preparing a manned flight to Mars. Hard radiation and bad gravitation changes are the most formidable stumbling blocks. Be that as it may, we have no reason to bury the idea, Academician Grigoryev said in a communication headed, "Physiological Problems of Manned Martian Flight".
Martian surface gravitation is a mere 0.38 of the terrestrial. A long sojourn on the Red Planet will inevitably enfeeble spacemen's muscles and bones, drastically change blood pressure, and cause eye and vestibular disorders. Hard solar radiation also badly threatens health. Spacemen on terrestrial orbits are in far better conditions, with the Earth gravitation field to protect them.
Terrestrial and orbital tests brought out other health problems-muscular atony and eventual atrophy, and progressing calcium excretion from bones to make them fragile.
A self-sustained craft will be in flight 500 days and nights, at the shortest, to roughly twenty-four months, at the longest-hence the crew's inevitable health problems.
Artificial gravitation on board promises to avoid incurable diseases. The idea was a brainchild of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), brilliant Russian scientist and pioneer of space rocket research. It was tested in practice in the "Bion", or Cosmos 936, a Russian satellite which carried animals on board for biological experiments. Rats who regularly had a go at a tiny centrifuge during the flight were doing fine-far better than their crewmates who had none. That made space biologists hopeful.
Another similar experiment, however, brought alarming changes of bones and cells. Be that as it may, artificial gravitation tests will go on.
Academician Grigoryev's Moscow-based institute is active on an international R&D project for a small-radius centrifuge to be installed in a Martian craft, he said with pride while showing a slide representing the installation.
