Redesigning Astronauts Space seems like it is there to kill us. Our human bodies are so fragile it looks like we are not ideally suited to travel into space. We have problems with radiation, which can fry us along with a narrow zone of comfort. If it’s too cold we can die. If it’s too hot we can die. If we don’t get food or water in a short period of time we can die. If we get too close to a powerful gravity source it can destroy our ship and we will die. We are not been exactly designed to travel in space and because of this other life forms may be better suited for space travel. We design bulky space suits and ships which need protection from radiation but hamper our ability to launch them since today’s shielding calls for lead and a lot of it to be used to insulate the walls of our ships, making it much harder to launch that heavy load. What am I getting at here, am I saying we should not explore space? Absolutely not, I am for space exploration and the protection of the human body by any means. What I was talking about was our fragile nature and maybe we should think about eventually redesigning our own bodies. Years ago, this would have sounded really stupid, but today we are gaining access to our genome and will be able to make genetic modifications to babies and such and it might not be a long stretch to think about a space faring race, which we are about to be, modifying themselves to make it more practical to travel in space. Conquering radiation would be a tremendous leap forward. While we might not ever to be able to survive large doses, there may be a point where we can protect ourselves with body modification which could mean not wearing spacesuits on Mars for example and only needing breathing devices. Recently astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station known as the ISS. He has an identical twin brother who was a former astronaut named Mark Kelly. Identical twins should have the same DNA and they did before Scott went into space. I say before he went into space because he no longer had the same DNA when he got back. NASA had routinely checked the DNA of both brothers at different periods to monitor genetic shifts. The long shift at the space station caused Scott to have an increase in methylation. Methylation causes the process of turning genes on and off. The scientists stated as soon as a human gets into space there is almost an explosion in genetic activity. “With this study, we’ve seen thousands and thousands of genes change how they are turned on and turned off. This happens as soon as an astronaut gets into space, and some of the activity persists temporarily upon return to Earth.” Telomeres are the caps at the end of our DNA and they protect our chromosomes. As we get older they shorten. Stress can affect them along with other factors such as lack of exercise, smoking and other things. When NASA sent Scott into space they expected the stress to make his telomeres shorter than Marks. They were surprised to see they increased in length, yet when he got back to earth they reverted back to their original size. Could it be telomeres are affected by gravity or some other force we haven’t assigned to them? Other parts of the body were also affected, for example Scott’s arteries had their walls thicken, but along with this was inflammations. If just going into space can change our DNA it seems we could do this without going into space if we could repeat the same conditions on earth. I am certainly not the first one to think this way. Craig Venter is a scientist and genetic engineer. He has been telling NASA they should consider genetic engineering techniques and genetic screening for astronauts because it could make space exploration much safer for them. He said, "I think this could change the shape of what NASA does, if you make the commitment to do it.” He should know because he and his team were responsible for decoding the human genome. Venter believes altering human genes will produce astronauts which will be much safer traveling in space. One of the things he mentioned was being able to make quick repairs to genes in space which were damaged. Earth contains many forms of life and some of this life is much sturdier than we are. Some scientists believe we can adopt some of the attributes of insects and other life to make us better at surviving space travel. Take the common roach. It can survive high levels of radiation. If we can figure out how it does this we might be able to apply this to a human body. This is why we have to examine the life around us very carefully on the microscopic level. I am talking about all forms of life, insect, animal, fish and even plants. We might be able to extract some tiny strand of DNA which would make a big difference to an astronauts’ life. Having said this, we have to be careful not to turn the astronaut into something other than human. Some scientists believe if we would put as much effort into redesigning humans as we do in designing new weapons we could have an incredible astronaut corps. They might be more resistant to radiation, much stronger and smarter. This would make for much more efficient astronauts and much safer ones.
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