Alzheimer’s Will Limit Human Space Travel

I explain why solving Alzheimer’s will enable us to travel further toward the stars.

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

I read a lot of science fiction, as scores have done before me over the past few centuries. I find a galactic setting helpful in engaging with problems of our present world in a way that makes it feel like there is a greater distance, making reflection feel safer. Contrary to readers in the 20th century, space travel for the common person is becoming less like fiction daily as non-astronauts visit the International Space Station, rocket launches are increasingly affordable and renewable, and economies are shifting towards using extraterrestrial environments!

We will visit Mars in person in the coming decades, a months-long trip one-way. As I look forward to playing Bethesda Game Studio’s Starfield after recently finishing all nine books of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, I think about the plans that incorporate even further destinations. Being a physician-scientist, it is hard not to think of the challenges that come from long-distance travel! While some health concerns of space travel are already reasonably well known, such as muscle deconditioning or the bombardment from cosmic radiation, several conditions have not yet been considered hazards in space travel. This is mainly because the technologies that…