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If we're going to establish a longstanding colony off world, reproduction will be necessary.
A Russian experiment in 2007 showed us that giving birth and conceiving in space is at least possible after a cockroach named Hope birthed 33 baby roaches and one of those roaches later conceived during the mission.
However, cockroaches aren't humans, and a lot of questions remain around how space radiation and low gravity would affect a developing fetus since we've never sent a pregnant person to space, and likely won't for a long time given the potential risks.
Even here on Earth in fully-equipped hospitals, giving birth can be dangerous.
So, both Musk's Martian colony and Bezos' space stations would have to be equipped with healthcare systems identical to those on Earth, if not better, said Adam Watkins, a professor of reproductive biology at the University of Nottingham.
It's not clear to Watkins whether space stations or Mars cities would be a better place for giving birth — they may both come with equal risk. But Watkins thinks it's likely that Musk would achieve off-world human reproduction before Bezos since Musk is already working on establishing his space colony before the end of this century.
"I think establishment of human colonies on Mars is more likely to occur before we have significant human colonies established on large structures in space," he said later in an email to BI.
如果我们要在外星建立一个长期的殖民地,繁殖是必不可少的。
2007 年,俄罗斯的一项实验向我们表明,在太空中生育和受孕至少是可能的,因为一只名叫 Hope 的蟑螂生下了 33 只小蟑螂,其中一只后来在任务期间受孕。
然而,蟑螂不是人类,而且关于太空辐射和低重力如何影响发育中的胎儿仍存在许多疑问,因为我们从未将孕妇送入太空,而且考虑到潜在的风险,很可能在很长一段时间内都不会这样做。
即使在地球上设备齐全的医院里,分娩也可能很危险。
因此,诺丁汉大学生殖生物学教授亚当·沃特金斯 (Adam Watkins) 表示,马斯克的火星殖民地和贝索斯的空间站都必须配备与地球上相同甚至更好的医疗保健系统。
沃特金斯并不清楚太空站和火星城市哪个更适合生育——它们的风险可能相同。但沃特金斯认为,马斯克很可能会先于贝索斯实现人类外星繁衍,因为马斯克已经着手在本世纪末之前建立太空殖民地。
“我认为,人类在火星上建立殖民地的可能性比我们在太空大型建筑上建立大规模殖民地的可能性更大,”他后来在给 BI 的电子邮件中说道。
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