From: khayash@hsc.usc.edu (Ken Hayashida)
Subject: Re: Long Term Space Voyanges and Effect NEwsgroup?
Keywords: Mars and Lunar missions
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 42
NNTP-Posting-Host: hsc.usc.edu

In article <C65FIE.4ty@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
writes in response to Michael Adams post:
>>I vote for a later on sci.space.medicine or similar newsgroup fro the
>>discussion of long term missions into space and there affects on humans and
>>such..- Adams
>
>Why bother with a new newsgroup?  If you want to discuss the subject,
>*start discussing it*.  If there is enough traffic to annoy the rest of
>us, we will let you know... and *then* it will be time for a new newsgroup.

Well, here goes.

The first item of business is to establish the importance space life
sciences in the whole of scheme of humankind.  I mean compared
to football and baseball, the average joe schmoe doesn't seem interested
or even curious about spaceflight.  I think that this forum can
make a major change in that lack of insight and education.

All of us, in our own way, can contribute to a comprehensive document
which can be released to the general public around the world.  The
document would scientifically analyze the technical aspects of long
term human habitation in space.

I believe that if any long-term space exploration program is to 
succeed we need to basically learn how to engineer our own microworld
(i.e. the spacecraft).  Only through the careful analyses of engineering,
chemical, biological, and medical factors will a good ecosystem be created
to facilitate human life on a long-duration flight.

So, I would like to see posts of opinions regarding the most objective
methods to analyze the accepted scientific literature for technologies
which can be applied to long-duration spaceflight.  Such a detailed
literature search would be of interest to ourselves as space advocates
and clearly important to existing space programs.

In essence, we would be dividing the space life science issues into
various technical problems which could be solved with various technologies.
This database of acceptable solutions to various problems could form the
basis of detailed discussions involving people from the bionet, isunet,
and any other source!

I'm eager to hear your comments and see posts on this thread.
