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Astronauts Attach Mannequin to Outside of ISS

Posted by michael on Sat Feb 28, 2004 04:51 AM
from the open-the-pod-bay-doors-hal dept.
Space Science
lhouk281 writes "According to Space.Com, astronauts have attached a mannequin to the outside of the International Space Station to study the effects of radiation on the human body. The mannequin contains actual bone surrounded by simulated organs and synthetic skin, with sensors studded throughout." There's another story that has detail on how the spacewalk went: a suit malfunction caused the spacewalk to end prematurely.
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  • actual bones (Score:4, Funny)

    by tsunamifirestorm (729508) on Saturday February 28 2004, @04:54AM (#8415587) Homepage
    to they actually take a skeleton? or do they grind up a bunch of bones to make a kind of solid substance?

  • Dude... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JoeLinux (20366) <joelinux@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday February 28 2004, @04:55AM (#8415594) Homepage
    ...what if air leaked out into space? That would suck!!

    *ducks*
  • I could almost swear this was the subject of a Far Side cartoon..

  • Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by venomix (87217) on Saturday February 28 2004, @04:58AM (#8415602) Homepage
    That synthetic skin would have to be really strong for this thing not to blow up due to low pressure, wouldn't it?

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)

      by 1s44c (552956) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:07AM (#8415630)

      I believe thats a myth.

      There just isn't enough pressure in the human body to make it explode in a vacuum like you see in sci-fi films.

        • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Tango42 (662363) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:30AM (#8415693)
          Indeed, you wouldn't freeze, because there's nowhere for the heat to go. Usually things lose heat by conduction (and convection), which is fast, in space you have only radiation, which is much slower. (However, if you were walking around on the dark side of the moon you might lose heat throught your feet to the ground)

          • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by no longer myself (741142) on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:07AM (#8415762)
            OK, so at the risk of showing off my ignorance (I know... already too late.) Here's a question I've been pondering for some time now:

            Obviously if you just abruptly depressurised a person, they'd form nitrogen bubbles in their blood and contract the bends, and probably die. But what if... And this is a big morbid what if... What if you slowly depressurised a person while having an oxigen mask securely (but comfortably) attached to their face? Could you eventually bring a human body down to zero atmospheres and they'd be able to stay alive?

            If not, what would be the lowest limit?

            • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:35AM (#8415816)
              I did research subjects related to this for a discussion on a forum a few years ago. Both the US and Russians had astronauts who suffered 'explosive decompression' down to almost no atmospheres. One was due to a large rip in a mock spacesuit, and the other due to decompression of the entire capsule they were in. Both survived, despite being decompressed for up to 45 seconds. They lost consciousness very quickly, after 10-15 seconds, and had no ill effects afterwards.

              One of the problems with long term decompression is that blood vessels near the surface expand greatly... suck on the inside of your arm for an example - it happens bodywide. Not a problem for a few minutes, but it will end up bruising tissue badly after long term exposure.

            • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by lxs (131946) on Saturday February 28 2004, @07:05AM (#8415883)
              if you breathe 100% oxygen, you'd still have to have about 1/5th of an atmosphere of gas in your lungs to function properly (since the human body is designed for ~20% oxygen @ 1atm) you may be able to go a little lower than that but that's still an awful lot of pressure to contain, unless you start breathing liquids [bris.ac.uk], which AFAIK has only been tested at high pressures, but might equally provide advantages at near vacuum .

              The other problem would be evaporation. Your sweat would boil off in a vacuum, which would leave you extremely cold and with very dry skin.

              And if you're in space, prepare yourself for the ultimate in sunburn.

              Needless to say, I won't be volunteering for tests.
              • Sweat wouldn't cool you down any more than it does in an atmosphere, in fact, it would cool you down less. Liquids boil in a vacumn because of the low pressure, temperature has nothing to do with it. Sweat cools you down because the water uses heat from your body to evaporate, as it doesn't need heat to evaporate in space, it wouldn't cool you down.

                • Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)

                  by lxs (131946)
                  I'm sorry but evaporation always leads to heat loss. If you evaporate a fixed number of grammes of a given liquid, you lose a fixed number of joules. This heat comes from the breaking of vanderwaals forces between molecules, not from acting against ambient pressure.

                    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)

                      by lxs (131946) on Saturday February 28 2004, @09:07AM (#8416163)
                      You really need to learn some physics.

                      Some points to consider:

                      1. the molecules don't 'know' whether there is a vacuum or not. They just feel an electrostatic force due to each other's proximity.

                      2. temperature and heat are two different things.

                      3. The boiling point is the temperature at which the vapour pressure of the liquid equals the ambient pressure.
                      When a liquid reaches boiling point, evaporation goes much faster (since it can occur throughout the liquid not just at the surface which leads to great heat loss, which means that the temperature cannot rise any further. So at lower pressures, the boiling point is lower.)

                      4. It's saturday and sunny out (at least around here it is), so instead of arguing about physics, it's far more fun to go outside.
          • Yeah, I've always thought this too. And it's mostly right -- you certainly will never see that cringe-worthy bad-sci-fi staple of liquids "freezing and boiling at the same time."
            But interestingly, I discovered just last week if you take a spaceship out of direct sunshine, it starts to lose heat pretty substantially. One of the first space stations (I forget which) had its heatshield buggered up by over-early deployment and it started to overheat dramatically. An astronaut pushed an umbrella arrangement out an airlock to provide cover from the sun, and the temperature "immediately began to drop" (ok, a little obvious) and was within the expected range within a day. I saw this on "The Planets" TV show which was excellently researched, so I'd assume this was pretty valid.

            In summary, radiation of heat seems to still provide a pretty good cooling mechanism in space, despite being much slower than conduction.

            So while you'll be relieved to know you'll asphyxiate in comfort and warmth, you'll eventually become a corpsicle if you stay out of the sun(light).

            cheers, Sal

            --
            Sal

            Writings: saltation.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
            Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]

            • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by AlecC (512609) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:04AM (#8415758) Homepage
              Who would have thought that the sun heated the earth through convection eh?

              The sun is about 6000K: you are about 300K. Since radiation goes as the fourth power of temperature, the sun is about 20^4 times as good a radiator as a human body.

              You would, of course, eventually freeze in space. But it would be many hours after you suffocated.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by MoonFog (586818) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:12AM (#8415641)
      Here's how they do it:

      The space mannequin's "skin" is a coat of multi-layer insulation containing thermo-luminescence dosimeters, detectors that glow in proportion to the amount of radiation they receive. Those detectors are distributed about every inch (2.5 centimeters) throughout the torso to give scientists a depth-dose profile of radiation exposure. (...) Encapsulating the Phantom torso is a protective canister of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic.

        • Maybe I should've posted more of the text -
          Itself replete with radiation sensors, the canister's interior supports an oxygen environment to better mirror its human space suit counterparts.

          Also, this is just the torso, not an entire dummy. No arms or legs.

    • RANDO (Score:4, Informative)

      by charboy1 (468037) on Saturday February 28 2004, @07:38AM (#8415961)
      That synthetic skin would have to be really strong for this thing not to blow up due to low pressure, wouldn't it?

      Actually the phantom is made up of several slices, about 30, stacked on top of each other on a central rod. (Think of the old baby toy.) The main material of the phantom is called RANDO(R) [phantomlab.com]. It's embedded with bits of bone and polyurethane to simulate organs. I believe the "natural bone" is ground up and reshaped into bone like structures.

      To answer your question, there's really nothing to "blow up" during depressurisation. All of the phantom slices are solid with lots of cut-outs for radiation detectors.

      - charboy

  • it'll be... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nomel (244635) <turd AT inorbit DOT com> on Saturday February 28 2004, @04:58AM (#8415604) Journal
    it'll be interesting to see what space debris [esoc.esa.de] does.

  • Cheaper Alternative (Score:3, Funny)

    by metallic (469828) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:04AM (#8415620)
    Why do this research in space when you could do the same research on a certain CEO in Utah in a lab for much cheaper. Oh, wait... too late.

  • *sigh* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord_Slepnir (585350) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:05AM (#8415625) Journal
    If sci-fi films from the 70s and 80s haven't taught us anything, its that you shouldn't expose real human bones covered in anything to radation.

    Unless the real reason is to create space zombies for the purposes of space exploration. Think about it: no need to pack along food, no need to pack along oxygen...perfect for GW Bush's planned invasion of Mars.

  • Dummy discovers external radiation effects (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gringer (252588) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:07AM (#8415628)
    While scientists have used Phantom-like dummies in the past aboard the space shuttle and inside the ISS, the radiation hazards of open space on sensitive body organs is still unclear.[emphasis added]

    I'm just wondering how they would make claims from this - "See, the radiation at 2.5cm below the middle of the first left rib is X, therefore it will cause a mild nausea".

    Sure, artificial organs would give a slightly better idea of the radiation penetration, but why would such knowledge be useful?

    • radiation effects are well documented (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kippy (416183) on Saturday February 28 2004, @10:17AM (#8416448)
      There's nothing special about radiation in space. It can and has been reproduced here and there had been extensive research [marssociety.org] done on it. This looks to me like another science fair type experiment on the ISS. It's like when I didn't water a plant in 4th grade, recorded that it died and called it a project.

  • The effects of "radiation" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:08AM (#8415632)
    Yeah right. I think it's more to "study the effect on a human body of being tied to the outside of the fucking spaceship".

    Or, more specifically: "Put the fear of God into cosmonaut Josif by telling him if he forgets to put down the seat on the vacuum-toilet one more time, we're putting him out there next".

    And next week, in the interest of furthering science and our understanding of the universe, the ISS will be installing a plank.

  • Cool idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thogard (43403) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:13AM (#8415646) Homepage
    Now if the ISS was high enough to make this expierment useful, then it would be a great idea but the ISS is in a very low orbit well inside the protective magnetosphere of earth. While there isn't enough atmosphere to protect anyone from small particles, there is enough to slow its orbit down.

  • Space.. the final frontier... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:15AM (#8415650)
    Once upon a time NASA decided to send three astronauts to space for two years.

    One was American, One was Russian and the other was English.

    NASA allowed each of them to take 200 pounds of baggage each.

    The American decided to take along his wife, the Englishman decided to take along books to learn how to speak German, and the Russian decided to take along cigarettes.

    Two years later, when the space shuttle landed, there was a big crowd waiting to welcome them home.

    First came the American and his wife and each of them had a baby in their arms.

    Next came the Englishman speaking fluent German. They both gave their speeches and got a rousing round of applause.

    Suddenly, out came the Russian with a cigarette in his mouth. He walked up to the podium, snarled at the crowd, and asked "Has anyone got a match?"

  • TRUE STORY (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:18AM (#8415660)
    When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" statement but followed it by several remarks, usual com-traffic between him, the other astronauts and Mission Control. Just before he re-entered the lander, however, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck Mr. Gorsky."
    Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people questioned Armstrong as to what the "Good luck Mr. Gorsky" statement meant, but Armstrong always just smiled. Just last year, (on July 5, 1995 in Tampa Bay FL) while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. This time he finally responded. Mr. Gorsky had finally died and so Neil Armstrong felt he could answer the question.
    When he was a kid, he was playing baseball with a friend in the backyard. His friend hit a fly ball which landed in the front of his neighbor's bedroom windows. His neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, young Armstrong heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky. "Oral sex! You want oral sex?! You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

  • Suit Malfunction? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Balial (39889) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:22AM (#8415669) Homepage
    I didn't know Janet Jackson was on the space station!

  • Manequin 3: space (Score:4, Funny)

    by mr_burns (13129) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:28AM (#8415686)
    I hope this doesn't mean that they'll make another sequel to those manequin movies where the mall manequin comes to life. Only this time in space. I've had enough bad 80's background music and forced jokes about window displays. Saving the ISS from the mars mallrats is a half-plot I can't bear.

  • Ah.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kcbrown (7426) <slashdot@sysexperts.com> on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:29AM (#8415689)
    Now we know what they had in mind for Lance Bass if he had been allowed to make the trip!

    Such a shame...testing on a mannequin just isn't the same, but I guess you just make do with what you have.

    :-)

  • Nothing critical, just a SUIT MALFUNCTION (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alsee (515537) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:33AM (#8415699) Homepage
    a suit malfunction caused the spacewalk to end prematurely

    On the bright side it did not cause the spacewalker to end prematurely.

    -

  • That must be creepy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zakabog (603757) <john AT jmaug DOT com> on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:38AM (#8415710)
    ...wake up in the morning and there's a body hanging outside your window. "There's something on the wing!"

    Anyone else think one of the astronauts ordered a real doll [realdoll.com] and when the other astronauts caught him with it they put it outside? Then when NASA asked about the body outside the space station they just answered "Uhh well we're ummmmm testing the affects of radiation on the human body, yeah that's it."

  • Why use a mannequin? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adept256 (732470) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:39AM (#8415716)
    Why not use an organ donor? Or one of those people who want to have their ashes put into space? I'd do it, if I were dead, that is... better than being wormfood.

    Is that why air is such a precious commodity in space? They need it to blow up their girlfriends? Must get mighty lonely up there :)

  • Worthwhile Experimentation... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Genda (560240) <`mariet' `at' `got.net'> on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:55AM (#8415742) Journal
    Mayhaps in a similiar vein,

    We could attach the "SCO Legal Team" to the bottom of a space shuttle, and find out what the radiation effects of reentry are on a pack of gravy sucking pigs...

    Genda

  • Face... (Score:3, Funny)

    by danormsby (529805) on Saturday February 28 2004, @05:57AM (#8415746) Homepage
    I'm all for scientific experiments in space but why did this dummy get the face of Darl McBride? Did he upset someone?

  • related material (Score:3, Informative)

    by Momo_CCCP (757200) on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:23AM (#8415795)
    If you missed the 60s because you weren't born, here's a good link : http://www.apolloarchive.com/
    Now that high definiton microcams exist, I wish the astronauts would broadcast a little more...

  • In later news (Score:3, Funny)

    by moltar77 (708055) on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:25AM (#8415800)
    Later today, mission control was shocked as astronauts relayed a new message. What they had once mistaken for a mannequin was actually former vice president Al Gore. Barely affected by the radiation, Mr. Gore said he felt "quite stimulated" from the venture, and that he would like to plan a return flight in the future. At this time there is no comment from NASA administration on Mr. Gore's proposal.
  • I don't understand. Surely they could have found a real person on the internet who had a fetish about being strapped to the outside of a rocket and shot into space? Their results would be guaranteed to be realistic that way: actual bone surrounded by actual organs and actual skin.

    Legally, as long as they didn't eat him they should be all right.

    cheers, Sal
    --
    Sal

    Writings: saltation.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
    Wravings: go-blog-go.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]

  • Waste of time and effort (Score:3, Funny)

    by Frantactical Fruke (226841) <renekita@@@dlc...fi> on Saturday February 28 2004, @06:53AM (#8415861) Homepage
    There is already plenty of literature on the effects of cosmic radiation on the human body:

    The Fantastic Four by Marvel Comics.

    I wonder which powers the Super Dummy will manifest next week.
    "Oh look, it's the Invisible Thing!"

  • Virtual Crash Dummies (Score:3, Funny)

    by jxliv7 (512531) on Saturday February 28 2004, @07:10AM (#8415894)
    .


    I wonder if there's another inflatable dummy that the guys use inside...?

  • does the dummy have a name? (Score:4, Funny)

    by martin-boundary (547041) on Saturday February 28 2004, @09:20AM (#8416216)
    I hope the dummy's name isn't Dave.

    "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't let you in, Dave."

  • Sure, they *say* it's for testing radiation.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by kcubkg (752370) on Saturday February 28 2004, @12:59PM (#8417211)
    ...but we know it's really a scarecrow to keep away those pesky space aliens!

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