The Challenges Of Space Travel

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The affect that space travel has on the human mind is unfathomable to those who have yet to experience such a thing. While children, and even many adults, dream of one day traveling through space and living on another planet, most do not think of the extreme mental struggles that come with this adventure of a lifetime. The struggles of food, water, hygiene, isolation, and gravity are only a handful of what astronauts have to deal with on their missions through space and walking among other planets.
While it is an exciting thought that humanity may be living on another planet, such as Mars, one day, it may not be as easy as society thinks when we finally make it there. An experiment was done by NASA to simulate what it would be like for a group of people to live on terrain similar to Mars (Cornet, 2015). “A major component of the
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“From the moment of lift-off, an astronaut 's body is bombarded with various uncomfortable sensations & the roar of the rocket engine, sinus congestion and flashes as cosmic rays hit their retinas, to name a few” (Ananthaswamy, 2012, para 8). Ananthaswamy (2012) also mentions that in addition to these struggles, the astronaut experiences problems with their sleep cycle and dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide within their environment. Robert (2015) elucidates that due to exploding stars and black holes, there are cosmic rays of radiation everywhere in space. These rays are so powerful that Apollo crew had experiences of closing their eyes and seeing bright, flashing lights (Robert, 2015). “Dr. Zeitlin reported radiation levels between Earth and Mars detected by the Mars Science Laboratory craft during its cruise to the red planet, and found that exposure was equivalent of getting ‘a whole body CT scan once every 5 or 6 days’” (Robert, 2015, para

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