• Question: If given the opertunity to go to mars to live and study any possible drugs would you go and why??

    Asked by Curry123 to Eleni, Hannah, Jenny, Oli, Steven on 14 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Hannah Bolt

      Hannah Bolt answered on 14 Nov 2016:

      Hi Curry123,

      I’d love to go to mars! I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger and love the idea of space exploration. I think it would be really interesting to investigate how drugs work in space. Space is a unique environment with microgravity which has so many different effects on the body.

      There is some evidence that drugs lose their effectiveness in space, possibly due to the higher levels of radiation that they are exposed to compared to Earth (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13092523). So this would be a really interesting thing to look into more, especially on a long mission to mars we’d need to look into different ways to produce drugs for any future colonies that get set up there.

      Fungi and bacteria can produce different drugs (like penicillin, which is produced by a fungus). In future space missions NASA are going to take some fungi to see if they can produce themselves drugs whilst in space. This would be the sort of thing I’d like to get involved with!

      Hannah

    • Photo: Steven Street

      Steven Street answered on 18 Nov 2016:

      Hi Curry123,

      I would love the opportunity to go into space. That would be amazing! Though I think with current technology it’ll likely be a one way trip to mars. You would be a true pioneering explorer of humanity, but i’m not sure I would like living on a planet with nothing more than rocks for the rest of my life!

      Steve

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