Orion

There is a great deal of interest from national space agencies to go to the Moon and Mars. ESA wants to go to the Moon and establish a village there. NASA wants to go to Mars. Astronauts and Cosmonauts from all over the world are already living aboard the ISS. What can they do in their free time? It can’t be all about reading books or game play on computers. Think of new sports or games that could take into account the low gravity (e.g. a space lacrosse game, extreme basketball). What about real or virtual experiences involving the Apollo 11 landing site on the Moon? Or following the paths of Sojourner, Spirit or Curiosity on Mars using a form of cross-country skiing? Think of new ways for to astronauts to use their free time. To present your results develop an app that makes use of virtual reality tools.

Our idea suggests a way of solving the boredom problem of the astronaut’s in the same time it takes care of their mental state and physical health, by the means of a new way that assumedly solves some of the problems that microgravity.

Microgravity presents a variety of challenges and problems to the human body. Starting from the biggest and most important one, bone mass loss.

A typical human being after the age of 65, loses 1% of bone mass per year, however in an astronaut’s body this loss is more drastic, since an astronaut loses 1% of bone mass per month. This is an amount which has an immense effect on the astronaut’s health, since bones are not only used for body support and protection but also for blood and a variety of other cells production and development, which have a crucial role in maintaining homeostasis, therefore life itself.

Our idea implies the use of an electromagnet to generate a magnetic field inside some specific areas of the spaceship in which the activities will be carried on, which would simulate the gravitational field.

Space conditions are extreme, which means that life on space is likely to be impossible for any kind of life form that we today know. But these extreme conditions provide a great way to generate a magnetic field, that is by means of superconductivity, a physical phenomenon that occurs in extremely low temperatures, temperatures near absolute zero.

Now, superconductivity solves one of the biggest problems of this idea, which is the energy source. Since a superconductor hasn’t got any resistance we can pass through it enormous amounts of electric current without losing any of the input current.

The way this electromagnet would work is quite simple, basically is like a solenoid, wrapped wires around the ship would create a magnetic field that inside the ship would be a uniform magnetic field.

This idea can be implemented on many things, here are some of the following:

• Leisure
• Physical Activity
• The TV factor
• Protection against solar radiation

Leisure time includes the activities that help the astronauts relax and help them cope with all the stress and intense pressure that the mission itself brings. Leisure itself requires dedicated spaces and areas, two things that are not very easy to get in an inter-plantar spaceship.

It seems as a negligible thing that can easily be ignored, but if we are talking about a mission that can take months or a possible colonization is a very important part of the mission, since it plays a major role in the mental state and health of the crew.

Taking in consideration all these needs, we came up with the idea of making an “artificial gravitation field” which would help the astronauts not only for their mental state but also their physical health. The most practical part of this idea is that it doesn’t require much space or immense amounts of energy.

Doing sports under these artificial circumstances has double benefits with the same amount of time and spent energy, Astronauts can both have fun and do the daily exercises at the same time.

Sports that can be played indoors such as table tennis or a simple version of hockey can supposably be performed inside a spaceship. Using these sports as both a leisure and physical activity means that the normal devices used for exercise can be left aside for the future inter-plantar missions. Instead of carrying two different kinds of devices for two different purposes, by the means of this idea that thing would be something that would belong to the past.

The sports that we mentioned above not only fulfill the size limitations but also provide an efficient and a fun way of doing great physical activities, which include all the major muscles of the human body, since they both are very demanding sports.

Creating a multi-functional area would reduce the space required for both of the sports by half.

The magnetic field can get involved if the balls used to play both of these games are attracted by the magnetic field. With the right calculations of magnetic field flux and the magnetic attraction of the balls, the games can be made both physically demanding and fun to play.

As we mentioned above, physical activity plays a crucial role in the astronaut’s health. Bone loss is a side-effect of the long term exposure to microgravity, scientist aren’t really sure why this phenomenon occurs, but what is for sure, is that this phenomenon needs to be prevented in order to keep the astronauts’ bodies healthy.

Normally astronauts train for hours each day in order to maintain their normal health, especially their bone mass. This training normally requires extra devices, which means extra space.

Our idea presents a possible solution for this. We thought of the astronauts wearing an armor, which will be attracted from the magnetic field inside the ship. This would create a sort of “artificial gravitational field” which would simulate the gravitational conditions of earth. Now implementing this idea to the physical activity and to the leisure time activities means something, instead of doing each leisure time activity and physical activity separately, astronauts can make both at the same time, having fun and getting their mind off the stress and intense pressure plus physical activity, which as we have mentioned before plays a crucial role in the astronauts’ health. Certain sports such as table-tennis or a simple version of hockey present a perfect solutions since they don’t take much space and they involve the use of all the most important muscles of the human body.

The effect of TV is everywhere. The fees paid for the TV rights today are higher than ever. They can sometimes be compared to the astronomical fees that space agencies spend to send shuttles and spaceships in space. A recent example is the Olympics, TV networks pay enormous amounts of money for the right to broadcast the event. A recent fee reached 4.38 billion $, an enormous amount of money. This is just an example of how the typical human is ready to pay on the entertainment. If Olympics, which is an event that is held every 4 years for the past hundreds of years can attract so much attention and money, imagine what a huge impact would a historical event have. The first trip to Mars can be the record braking event.

And since the astronauts will be doing sports under conditions that haven’t been seen before the cool and fun factor of the watcher would be present. Watchers could enjoy watching and the most important astronauts would enjoy playing and training at the same time. However, there will be a delay since the signals travel at the speed of light, and the distance between Earth and Mars is relatively big.

This idea can be implemented not only for the trip to Mars, but also for the possible future colonization of Mars. A possible colonization opens the door to a whole new variety of stuff, since the space limitations wouldn’t be as small as in the spaceship, and sports that require a great surface area to be played may be performed, with the same idea again and same benefits physical activity, leisure time and TV rights revenue.

Sports such as football or baseball would give a completely different experience, since the gravitational strength of Mars is about 1/3 that of Earth. Now the baseballs and footballs are designed for the normal Earth gravitational strength and using them under different gravitational conditions such as Mars’ gravitational strength would make them act in a different way, basically a hit would send a baseball hundreds of meters away, this can be solved by making the balls 3 times heavier as well as all the kits and devices used to play the game.

Virtually every company in the world would like a piece of this attention, so advertisement wouldn’t be a problem, big sports companies like Adidas or Nike pay billions for the rights of soccer teams here on Earth, if something similar would happen in Mars, the prices for those kinds of advertisement would be astronomical.

All this money can be used to provide supplies and fund future missions, therefore space agencies won’t be dependable on the state budget and the changing politics. This would open a new era to the space exploration, maybe a golden era.

The magnetic field here on earth protects us from many dangerous, lethal, radioactive particles. Here kicks in our idea with the electromagnetism. It will form an artificial magnetosphere that will protect the astronauts from most of those dangerous particles.

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Underhill, Charles R. (1906). The Electromagnet. D. Van Nostrand. p. 113.

"HFML sets world record with a new 37.5 tesla magnet". High Field Magnet Laboratory. 31 March 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2014.