If I hadn't been inside of Biosphere 2 and really lived a biological life-support system, I definitely would not be involved in life-support systems for space.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My dad and my mom convinced me to go into biomedical engineering because they said astronauts going to Mars will need life support systems.
It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.
We're going to understand that there is life on other bodies in the solar system.
We will create life from inanimate compounds, and we will find life in space. But the life that should more immediately interest us lies between these extremes, in the middle range we all inhabit between our genes and our stars.
Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.
I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts.
Development of space will improve life on Earth. Access to space is important for agriculture, humanitarian efforts, communications, and navigation.
As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt.
I am absolutely certain that life can exist in outer space, move around, find a new aqueous environment.
Any astronaut can tell you you've got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it.