NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed

tracer818 writes "In order to study a person as if they were in space without gravity, NASA scientists are paying subjects $17,000 to stay in bed for 90 straight days. The study will follow the Bed Rest Project standard model and be conducted at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. Participants will live in a special research unit for the entire study and be fed a carefully controlled diet."

I'm in.

[Mattygfunk1 (596840)]

Can I bring a friend? In all seriousness, what if you need to rub one out?

Re:I'm in.

[Daengbo (523424)]

Ninety days? I can do that standing on my head! Oh, wait ... I guess not.

Re:I'm in.

[Mattygfunk1 (596840)]

GEORGE: (Vowing) Well, I'll tell you this, though - I am never doing.. that , again.
ELAINE: What, you mean, in your mother's house, or all together?
GEORGE: (Definite) All together.
(The next three lines are said at the exact same time)
ELAINE: Oh, gimme a break..
JERRY: (Skeptical) Ohhh yeah.. right.
KRAMER: Oh, like you're gonna stop?
JERRY AND ELAINE: C'mon..
GEORGE: You don't think I can?
JERRY: No chance.
GEORGE: (Daring) You think you could?
JERRY: Well, I know I could hold out longer than you.
GEORGE: Care to make it interesting?
JERRY: Sure, how much?
GEORGE: A hundred dollars.
JERRY: (Pointing) You're on.
KRAMER: (Butting in) Wait a second, wait a second. Count me in on this. (Clicks his tongue)
JERRY: You?
KRAMER: Yeah.
JERRY: You'll be out before we get the check.
ELAINE: (Smiling) I want to be in on this, too.
GEORGE AND JERRY: (Rejecting) Ohh, no. No, no, no..
ELAINE: Why?
JERRY: (Showing difference) It's apples and oranges..
ELAINE: What? Why? (More 'no, no, no's from Jerry and George. Persistent) Why?
JERRY: Because you're a woman!
ELAINE: So what?
JERRY: It's easier for a woman not to do it than a man.
ELAINE: (Sarcastic) Oh.
JERRY: We have to do it. It's part of our lifestyle. It's like, uh.. shaving.
ELAINE: Oh, that is such bologna. I shave my legs.
KRAMER: (Making a point) Not everyday.
GEORGE: Alright, look, you want to be in?
ELAINE: Yeah!
GEORGE: You gotta give us odds. At least two to one - you gotta put up two-hundred dollars.
KRAMER: No, a thousand!
ELAINE: No, I'll - I'll put up one-fifty.
GEORGE: Alright, you're in for one-fifty.
JERRY: (Nodding) Okay, one-fifty.

Re:I'm in.

[electrictroy (912290)]

I have a feeling those 90 days would be really, really boring. They probably don't let you watch TV or surf the net or anything else interesting.

Also, it would be a cut in pay for me.

Re:I'm in.

[jez9999 (618189)]

what if you need to rub one out?

Is that the latest 'hood slang for masturbation? Genuine question.

Re:

[Slashdot Suxxors (1207082)]

Yep.

Re:I'm in.

[Carthag (643047)]

I can't believe I researched this. It goes back at least 15 years. I tried searching in Google Books & IMDB quotes as well, but the only citations prior to 1993 were in different contexts.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.beer/browse_frm/thread/66eb379b321b2433/11e668a230018072?lnk=st&q=%22rub+one+out%22#11e668a230018072 [google.com]
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tasteless.jokes/browse_frm/thread/1299b8d6d59e0f1e/45022260920fd617?lnk=st&q=%22rub+one+out%22#45022260920fd617 [google.com]

Re:I'm in.

[elmedico27 (931070)]

For those of you still stuck in 1993 and looking to update to the current vernacular, let me be of assistance and offer the following:

"Wax the Buick"
"Shake hands with Ben Franklin"
Or, my personal favorite, "Grease the Jesus"

Re:I'm in.

[electrictroy (912290)]

"spank the monkey" was popular when I was in college. I remember a friend of mine used that phrase as slang for "not doing anything" or "killing time". ME: "What are you doing after supper Jack?" "Oh just spanking the monkey."

That worked well between us guys, but one day he said it to a girl:

"What did you do this weekend Jack?"
"Oh nothing much Jill, just spanking the monkey."
(Jill blinks) : "What did you say?" ....

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

If it was posted to the internet in 1993, it seems pretty likely that it has been in use for quite a while at that point.

Kinda like how I always used to say "lol space colon close parenthesis!" whenever I was amused in the 80s. Though this is slightly different I'll admit.

Re:I'm in.

[coren2000 (788204)]

You think they are paying people just to watch them sleep? I assume that them watching you rub one out is part of the payment. I also assume they will stream the webcam watching you onto the internet to recoup their losses during these periods.

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

Keep your eyes on the prize, man

I lie in bed all the time

[dotancohen (1015143)]

I lie in bed all the time:
"Yes, I love you"
"Yes, it was good"
"No, I was not thinking about _her_"

Re:I lie in bed all the time

[DreamingReal (216288)]

You bring new meaning to the phrase "Talk to the hand".

Re:

[dotancohen (1015143)]

I figured out why being paid to lie is such big news on Slashdot - because to liberals it's basically an announcement that they can be paid to breathe.

I'm certain that there are those who would pay the liberals _not_ to breathe.

Details

[abscissa (136568)]

Is there a retroactive program?

What's that movie?

[QuantumG (50515)]

The one with Martin Sheen in it and they keep sending the soldiers into nuclear fallout to test whether or not they can advance to ground zero.. oh yeah, that's right Nightbreaker [imdb.com]. How many times exactly does NASA need to study the effect of weightlessness? It's bad, ok? Long term exposure to "micro-gravity" causes not too nice symptoms. Great, move on. NASA never seems to approach anything as a problem that needs to be overcome - or at least they haven't since the '60s. Problem: without some form of gravity, long term space flight is bad for humans. Solution: provide some form of gravity. There's two that readily come to mind; either accelerate the vehicle at 9.8m/s/s or make the vehicle big enough so that you can spin it and not get dizzy. The first uses up way too much energy and just isn't an option at the moment. The second is so damn obvious that Von Braun was talking about it in the '40s. But it has never been done.

Re:What's that movie?

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

Look, you know and I know that NASA has probably got better things to do than pay some labrats to learn how to eat, piss, and shit sitting down. The effects are, as you say, well known and obvious to anyone who has ever studied space travel and microgravity environments. Muscular atrophy, loss of balance, and other problems are well known.

But the department needs to spend its budget or else face cuts next year. With Obama already looking for ways to divert NASA funds into edumacation, the need is dire and if NASA engineers and scientists can't be busy, at least they can look busy.

I get paid a lot of money to do what I do. But sometimes I just sit around and stare at the monitor and space out. In order to not look like I'm wasting time, I run a Perl script in a command window that prints the text of random files on the filesystem until I stop it. It makes me look like I'm waiting for a compile to finish, and that's enough to keep me in the green.

Re:What's that movie?

[TheLink (130905)]

He could also try gentoo. Then he would often genuinely be waiting for a compile to finish.

Re:What's that movie?

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

make the vehicle big enough so that you can spin it and not get dizzy. [..] so damn obvious that Von Braun was talking about it in the '40s. But it has never been done.

Actually something like that was done on skylab. You don't need to spin the spacecraft. You just need a cylindrical track which you can run around. It works very well.

Re:What's that movie?

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

Actually, on a more serious note, I saw something like this on Discovery (or NatGeo, I can't remember). The purpose of the study wasn't just to observe patients suffering from bed sores and blood clots. They were subjected to 2 minute exercise regimens every day which were designed to keep them in good physical health even though the rest of the day they were bedridden. The goal was to create exercise devices that could be used quickly and simply without the need for gravity that would provide enough exercise to replace the amount we normally perform here on Earth.

It looked pretty grueling, even if only for 2 minutes a day.

Deeper understanding

[AlpineR (32307)]

How much artificial gravity do you need? 1.0 G? 0.2 G?

Will some experimental drugs help counteract the effects of weightlessness?

Can the problems be alleviated with specific exercises during weightlessness?

How long will it take to recover after returning to gravity? If an astronaut is weightless on a trip to Mars, can he be back up in a week or a month?

If you want to treat something as a problem to overcome, you might need to know more than "It's bad", ok?

Re:

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

TYou already mentioned the first problem: Size. "Just make it big enough" isn't a very good answer when you realize that the ISS has a "living volume" of about 425 m^3 - that's a large appartment, no a spaceship like you see in the movies.

This was proposed for the Apollo LM and CM. Run a tether between them and use the RCS to spin them up. The LM (being lighter) gets 1G and the CM gets 1/4 G.

You don't need to build a huge space station.

Re:

[MBGMorden (803437)]

I also saw the tether idea proposed in one of the brainstorms for a Mars mission. The travel vehicle and the supplies that would be used while actually on Mars would be in seperate containers, and they'd be tethered together by a long retractable cable. They'd essentially rotate around the common center of gravity (somewhere near the middle of the tether) and that would be what moved towards Mars.

Seemed very interesting. Everything was still small, and it would provide approximately Earth-level gravity i

2001: A Space Odyssey

[Airw0lf (795770)]

Is it just me or did anyone else imagine a test subject waking up one day to see a big black monolith standing at the foot of his bed?

Bedpan or Catheter?

[mikelieman (35628)]

I think it makes a world of difference in considering the "opportunity".

Re:

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

you aren't going to poop into a catheter.

I think I saw that movie on the web.

ESA Has Done Studies Long Ago

[eldavojohn (898314)]

The US is very badly lagging in the international bed rest race! I thought I read somewhere about the ESA doing this two years ago [esa.int] for female astronauts at least. There's some interesting comments on their WISE page [esa.int] such as:

All volunteers were surprised how fast the time passed by.

I'll bet that month you spend in bed is completely lost with little or no memories for it.

And if you really want to know more, they published all their findings for all their experiments in five hefty PDFs [esa.int].

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

Well, you could read a few books, or have a HDTV (for movies/games) in the ceiling above you :) I've been tempted before to just get a TV mounted above my bed but the outcomes of such a thing could be disastrous..! If I get paid to do it on the other hand.. where do I sign up? :)

To do today:

[bryanp (160522)]

Things to do today:

Find out if NASA will let me have a laptop in that bed.
Find out if my boss will let me telecommute for the next 90 days.

Re:You forgot...

[MichaelSmith (789609)]

Do they have cable/satellite

I am sure the have satellites

And then...?

[snarfies (115214)]

Will they also pay to rehabilitate you and your degenerated muscles afterwards?

Re:And then...?

[techpawn (969834)]

That was my first thought. Then there's the worry of blood clots and bed sores. Being bed bound is not as fun as people think and only for 17K? Your medical bills will be higher to fix all this messes up.

Re:

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Bed sores, or decubitus ulcers, are most often caused when the person laying down either cannot move around readily to relieve the pressure of laying in one place or cannot feel the discomfort caused from laying in one place.

If you use some isometric exercises, you could minimize the damage of the time in bed.

may be more difficult than some may imagine

[v1 (525388)]

I know I cannot lay on my back or side for that matter for too much time. More than 6 hrs on my back and my back starts hurting. More than 3 hrs on a side and my shoulder starts aching, so I have to change position at least once a night. I would expect for most, after about two straight weeks things would start getting torturous as there would be no side you wanted to lay on anymore.

Learned To Do that in College

[curmudgeon99 (1040054)]

NASA wants me to lie in bed? I learned to do that in college: "Yes, I'll love you tomorrow." / "No, there are no other girls in my life but you..." / "Of course I'll respect you tomorrow..."

Re:Learned To Do that in College

[BadAnalogyGuy (945258)]

You can lie all you want, I'm pretty sure Rosey knows you're seeing other hands.

This sounds like a statup idea from 1999

[abolitiontheory (1138999)]

alright boys, here's the plan:

1. lie in bed.

2. get fed.

3. profit!

sound good? let's get to bed!

They should call up Blizzard

[Shivetya (243324)]

and do a cross promotion, in particular concentrate on World of Warcraft players. With Season 4 PvP gear coming down these people will have lots of reason to spend all their time in one place

Re:They should call up Blizzard

[moosesocks (264553)]

and do a cross promotion, in particular concentrate on World of Warcraft players. With Season 4 PvP gear coming down these people will have lots of reason to spend all their time in one place

To the moderator who scored this as 'Insightful': Get Help.

day 89, and you have to bail?

[Chapter80 (926879)]

$5000/month? or $15,000 for 90 days?

It'd really suck if you got to day 89, and then had a family emergency.

Under $8/hour to ruin your health?

[guidryp (702488)]

Considering you are working 24/7, that is pretty low pay rate of under $8/hr. Maybe starving students might take them up on this. I think only 20 year olds would fully recover from this as well.

I might consider doing it for Ten Times that amount $150k to $200K. Not worth risking my health otherwise.

Not to mention this would probably feel like torture after a week. My back gets sore if I lay in bed too long on Sunday mornings.

Not worth the health risks

[mlwmohawk (801821)]

It sounds like a lot of money, but 90 days in bed will cause a lot of your body atrophy, heart, lungs, legs, etc. Not to mention a lack of vascular assistance in blood circulation could cause clots.

Governor of New York Pays better

[ThinkThis (912378)]

The (former) Governor of New York will pay $5000 per hour. Of course the requirements are different than NASA's.

USSR did this too.

[Cyberax (705495)]

There was a similar research program in the USSR - subjects lied on bed for 6 months without moving.

As far as I remember, one subject broke his femur when he tried to stand for the first time after the test. Also, all subjects experienced frequent orthostatic collapses (i.e. they fainted then they tried to stand up).

The damage was quickly corrected by using calcium gluconate injections and physical therapy.

Alas, I can't find a source for this in English.

That's $500 for staying in bed...

[MadMidnightBomber (894759)]

and $4500 for having to live in Galveston, TX.

Re:Depends on who's sleeping with me...

[Nullav (1053766)]

Who would want to lay next to someone for three months? Tolerating one's own smell would be enough of a problem at that point.

Re:

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

The government's been doing that for years. It's called welfare.

I hope you never need any help. People who think welfare is for lazy people don't generally do well when they are in a position of need.

Re:Paying People To Lie in Bed

[superyooser (100462)]

I'm not against it for the truly needy, but it is commonly abused. The government is paying some people to sit around and watch Oprah. Welfare shouldn't be used to promote a lifestyle of laziness for those who could work.

Ok, let me have a Take #2:
The government's been doing that for people for years. They're called federal employees.

Re:

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

People who think welfare is for lazy people generally have jobs.

I bet you don't realize just how many of those people who "have jobs" are themselves getting a type of welfare.

Do you have a big mortgage? You're getting "welfare" when you deduct your interest payments from your income taxes.

Do you have a kid in college? You're getting a nice fat welfare payment in the form of Pell Grants.

Are you an oil company exec or trader at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Chase? You're getting a HUGE amount of welfare from ou