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Space Science

Long-Term Effects of Weightlessness 201

Posted by Hemos from the elongated-spines dept.
MartinBartinFargo writes "The Age has an article detailing the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body. Stage 1 of the European Space Agency study involved 14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs, Stage 2 is currently underway. "
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Long-Term Effects of Weightlessness More

Long-Term Effects of Weightlessness

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  • Hmmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by SubMissionary ( 585480 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:21AM (#3756988) Homepage
    So lying on your back conducting all activities makes one weightless? Guess I should tell her to get on top more often...
      • Stage 1 of the European Space Agency study involved 14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs.
      • Stage 2 is currently underway.
      • Stage 3: Profit!

  • Whee! (Score:5, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:21AM (#3756989) Homepage Journal
    the European Space Agency study involved 14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs,

    Well, when the female volunteers start up, I'll be willing to help the poor things with whatever they need.

  • Stage 3 (Score:1, Funny)

    by meatspray ( 59961 )
    profit

  • What will stage 1 prove? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can't they just look at hospital records of people who are forced to stay on their backs for 6 months or more? The muscles atrophy. I don't see how this equates to weightlessness, unless they compare weighted atrophy against weightless atrophy.
    • It will show the effects on the internal systems, such as lungs, heart and the likes. It will also show effects on things such as how the body holds together.

      Strapping them down makes it easier to conclude certain things by excluding one factor that can skew things with such a small sample-set. Their own movement around the ship. If they are perfectly still with a constant g, taking it away might have some effects.

      Imagine the chucklehead who exercises every-day, up in space, representing the human race in weightlessness. People can conclude the wrong things as he'll be what many humans might not be.. exercising chuckleheads.

    • Re:What will stage 1 prove? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They replicate weightlessness by having the subjects lie on slightly tilted beds, head down (6 degrees IIRC). This causes blood to flow away from the legs and to pool in the brain replicating the blood flow that happens to astronauts in real weightlessness (stronger muscles used to pumping against gravity's pull mean that more blood goes to the top half of the body)

      For this reason hospital records are of limited use.
    • Looking at past records would probably not be a reliable source of information. In this case they are doing research that will affect the health of people who will be living under unusual conditions for two years, so it's important that the experiment is done under carefully controlled conditions. Also, you would have a hard time gathering data from looking at old hospital records because all of your subjects would have some kind of health problem, and that would probably screw up your results.

      dbc
  • Few people realize the psychological impact of long space flights, especially the lack of human contact. I mean, even the INTERNET couldn't kill the boredom.

  • Lame article (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Zelet ( 515452 )
    This article never really said anything. What worked? What didn't? Was there any data collected or did they do this for fun? Does anybody have a link to a scientific article that actually explains what they found out?

  • >14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs

    Well, now we know where the staff of Ain't It Cool News was this spring.
  • But this sounds very similar to how I telecommute...

  • Long Live the Unbreakable Soviet Union (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:28AM (#3757034) Homepage Journal
    I would suspect that the Russians know a thing or two about this, as they tend to keep their kosmonauts in space much longer than anyone else dares to. However, I can imagine a couple of reasons why they wouldn't be inclined to share their information; long-term weightlessness seems not to be very healthy, and the fact that they have exposed their people to those may not be good for their image.

    ---
    Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
    and captain of your soul.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You did not read the article, did you?
      Yours was also my first thought, but in the article it is noted, that during the spache flight, the kosmonauts /astronauts did (and do) sports. The study focuses on people not moving at all. Maybe the third stage includes freezing the person ;)

    • Not comparable (Score:2, Informative)

      by af_robot ( 553885 )
      Actually there were everyday physical exercises onboard spacestation Mir for kosmonauts so it can't be compared to this experiment. And most of kosmonauts still in good physical condition.
      You can't compare result on Earth with experience on space station.
      And, Yes - Russians know much more about longtime space effects that all other nations combined.
    • However, I can imagine a couple of reasons why they wouldn't be inclined to share their information; long-term weightlessness seems not to be very healthy, and the fact that they have exposed their people to those may not be good for their image.

      Well, I think after exposing a few hundred thousand former soviet citizens to near lethal doses of radiation, they probably aren't too worried about a few dozen kosmonauts getting worked up over this.

  • To anyone who is/was/used to be a mudder, that means that at the end of the three months, you're hoarding every purple shard, excalibur, Hand of Glory, ball of wisdom, soul slasher, holy grail and every other piece of limited eq in the game, have 10 months of rent, have Calaron, Keogh, Shasta, Coastie and a slew of other wizzies/arches pissed at you and have been accused of scripting approximately 200 times. =)
  • The volunteers needed a certain mental elasticity.

    You can say that again... I'm not altogether sure if I could muster the self-control needed to remain in one stationary position for three entire months. Remember tornado drills in school? I had the damnedest time keeping still, hunched over with my hands protecting my neck--and that was only for what, five or ten minutes? And these volunteers aren't even astronauts... so they don't even have "the right stuff" going for them! They're just postmen, builders, teachers and whatnot! What a bunch of crazy bastards.

  • Results of preliminary stages: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Little Dave ( 196090 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:29AM (#3757044) Homepage

    Boffin: Lets run through those results...

    Egghead: Test 1 - Watching TV while lying on back. No adverse physical side-effects.

    Boffin: Test 2 - Drinking beer while lying on back. No adverse physical side-effects.

    Egghead: Test 3 - Disposing of body's waste gases while lying on back. No adverse physical side-effects.

    Boffin: We conclude that these human males are perfectly suited to weightlessness.

  • I've wanted to drop 50 pounds for months, and if they'd take me, I could get rid of them all!
    • Unfortunately, this is the wrong way to lose weight, as most of the subjects' weight loss was muscle mass, and not fat.

      You can't burn any fat without exercise and enough protein.

    • I've wanted to drop 50 pounds for months, and if they'd take me, I could get rid of them all!

      Unfortunately, all you'd lose is muscle; your fat stores wouldn't be affected as long as you're adequately fed. So, you'd walk - or crawl - out of there with all the bad weight you currently have, and none of the muscle that is necessary to burn it off.

      That's one reason this experiment seems bogus. Without any body activity, how can you compare the experiment to space-based weightlessness? They'd be better off sticking these people in a swimming pool with perfectly balanced weights for 3 months.

      • Re:I'll Volunteer.... (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        They'd be better off sticking these people in a swimming pool with perfectly balanced weights for 3 months.

        Do you have any idea how pruny they would get, not to mention the shrinkage?!?!

  • The money (Score:3, Informative)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:30AM (#3757051)
    $20,000 for three months? Wow. That sure beats those cheapskates at NASA; they only spent $100 / day, or ~$9,000 for the three months.
    • $20,000 for three months? Wow. That sure beats those cheapskates at NASA; they only spent $100 / day, or ~$9,000 for the three months.

      This is indeed a generous amount. However, bear in mind that you'd also suffer fallout at work from taking a 3-month sabbatical, and you'll spend weeks regaining the ability to move or do anything strenuous for more than a few tens of minutes at a stretch.

      The good news is that this still beats having to sit around in true zero-g, which would do even nastier things to your body (in bed you still have to exert effort to lift things with your hands, to roll over, to breathe (to some extent), etc.).
      • in bed you still have to exert effort to lift things with your hands Last time I checked, absence of gravity didnt mean absence of mass. In order to move a mass you need a force. Inertia is still there. But taking things up in zero-G can be tricky, though. Wheres up??
        • Last time I checked, absence of gravity didnt mean absence of mass. In order to move a mass you need a force. Inertia is still there.

          True, but you can get away with applying much less force (and moving more slowly as a result).

          Also, you don't need to exert effort to keep your body in the same position (as you would to some extent for most positions on Earth).

    • Re:The money (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sapien__ ( 156881 )
      I suspect that since the article was in an Australian newspaper, the amount is in Australian dollars.

      Currently, $20000 AU is approximately $11500 AU [xe.com]

  • So why aren't space stations being planned (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:31AM (#3757064) Homepage
    like in the 2001 movie and countless SciFi stories, as rotating wheels which make their own artificial gravity? Jogging around the endless loop / track would be great exercise.
    • You must build HUGE space station to make noticable artificial gravity.It is not possible with current cost to deliver goods on orbit.
    • It would be hard to dock to the rotating station. The solar batteries would have to rotate all the time to point to the Sun. It would be hard to point scientific instruments to the Earth. Some experiments require microgravity.

      Rotating station may be a better place to live, but it would be a less interesting and useful place to work.

      • It would be hard to dock to the rotating station.

        Agreed. However, you could rotate only a portion of the station, such as living/exercise quarters. It's certainly feasible, why it's not being done is something I'm curious about as well. Probably because we don't have any plans right now for long term (years) occupation in a weightless environment.

      • Forgetting the improbability of how big it would have to be and how fast it would have to spin to approximate earth gravity, wouldn't your distance from the center effect the "gravity" pulling on you? I mean, if you're in the center of the thing, would the centrifucal force be as great? If not, there's your microgravity.

        Of course, things may be whizzing by you so fast you can't feasibly do anything...

        • I agree it would have to be big, but I question the need for earth's gravity. While 1g (simulated with the phony cintripital force) might be ideal, I suspect there would be significant benifit from much lower forces. .1g would be a lot easier to obtain, and would make sure there are some stresses on the body.

      • Easy: have the portions of the station that need to stay upright/pointing at the sun/dockable stabilized and mounted on a race bearing so that the rotating part rotates around it, while it stays stationary.
      • It would be hard to dock to the rotating station.

        Bah - I could do this all the time in Elite. Screwed up a few times to begin with and destroyed my ship and crew but...OK I see your point.

    • Size matters... (Score:2, Informative)

      by J23SE ( 107309 )
      You would need a far larger space station for this type of rotation to feel natural for the station's inhabitants.

      For example... if we would do this to the Mir space station, the difference in "gravity" between the top of the station and the bottom of the station would be sixfold. Your body would be pulled in wierd ways.

      Read more about it on your favorite science site, or where I got it from, the movie physics page featured on slashdot a while ago.
      • maybe not, can't find it, but someone else mentioned a good idea here on slashdot a few weeks ago. nOne could have 2 small sections connected with each other with a long cable and rotate around the cable with the middle of the cable serving as the centre of rotation. this would eliminate the risk of walking arouund with your head in 0G,while having 1G down by your feet, whith would happen in mir or the ISS if you started to rotate them.

        Thought it was a quite nifty idea..
    • The only reason to be in space is microgravity; so there'd be no point in rotating the whole space station. As far as rotating just the habitat portion of the station, it's difficult to imagine how you could do that -- what kind of seal you could make between the two compartments that would hold air perfectly but have very little friction. Perhaps more importantly, it's hard to see how you could rotate a part of the station at a few RPM and not transmit vibration back to the the other part, this vibration destroying the very microgravity that is the only reason for being there.

      For long duration space flights to somewhere, it makes perfect sense to rotate the ship; I can't imagine not doing that. But for a LEO space station I don't think it will happen, unless that space station is used for something other than microgravity research (tourism, maybe?)

      thad
  • 222$ per day.
    It should be read as "spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their bucks"

  • heinlein's take on near-weightlessness... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rapid prototype ( 551089 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:34AM (#3757083) Homepage
    at least as described in "the moon is a harsh mistress" is that reduced weight environs, such as the moon, prolong life indefinitely. although my gut feeling is that prolonged weightlessness would be very bad for you -- atrophied muscles and the like -- perhaps the benefits of your organs not cramming into one another constantly, and your back not being hunched down, and the ease of pressure on the joints... maybe it's not too far fetched?

    -rp
    • The moon is a harsh mistress was published in 1966. Heinlein had no idea what weightlessness could result in. Your guts are right.
    • Every animal on Earth, ourselves included, have been evolving for millions of years with only one real constant, gravity. The land has changed, the air has changed, but that 1g has been present for every ancestor we've had. Moving to a low or no g environment is something our bodies were never designed for. It's like using anything well outside of it's design specs, the bad possibilities are going to outweight the good possibilities by a big margain.

      -B
    • No sunlight, so no UV aging the skin.

      No significant spinal compression, so no getting shorter or bent.

      Fleshy masses are not pulled downwards enough to strain and stretch the supporting tissue, so no sagging.

      I believe that people on the moon would at least look much younger for much longer than people do on the Earth. I'm sure moon gravity is much healthier than free-fall, too. You'd probably still need some sort of drug treatment to keep healthy bones and the right amount of blood, though. I sure wouldn't want to live 20 years on the moon, and then come back to Earth.
      • I sure wouldn't want to live 20 years on the moon, and then come back to Earth.

        in "the moon is a harsh mistress" it was also postulated that once on the moon for a significant time (without excercising in a centrifuge, of course) an irreversible physiological change would occur. now i don't buy that, but i think that your heart would definitely find pumping at 1g pretty difficult, and if you didn't excercise those legs, you'd be pretty much confined to a wheelchair while you were on earth. not irreversible, but pretty hard to reverse without dying :)

        -rp

  • This doesn't seem like a well designed study (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperCal ( 549671 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:35AM (#3757091) Homepage
    I know that having the subjects lie on their backs is the best simulation of weightlessness over time, but it seems like a poor substitute. Their bodies are being stressed by gravity that would not be present in space. That difference could lead to either more of less 'health' over the long term. In low muscle exertion environments (I made that term up:), a little stress may increase bone degeneration or may be a catalyst for bone growth. I think the only way to get true results may be study people on the space station, which I believe is being done...
    • Its not a bad study. You can only get a few people "out there", so this is the only way to have more than a handful for comparison.

      They also study the effect of zero-G [space.gc.ca] on actual astronauts [nasa.gov] with results that can be beneficial for normal people [usuhs.mil].

    • Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology. I'm sickeningly reminded of early experiments on treatments for breast cancer, overwhelmingly, almost unanimously conducted on men (who rarely get breast cancer, especially comparative to women) -- so that the (lazy) researchers wouldn't have to compensate for menstrual cycles. Throw them a pity party, 'cause they got their streamers up.

      Relatedly, I somehow (why, I don't know) expected better than the spate of sexist comments from further up in this discussion. (Note to sexist comment creeps: Mature men with grown-up attitudes towards women tend to get laid more often than twits. This is The Other Half speaking.)

      Disgustedly, Interrobang

      • " Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology"

        Normally I would be the first to agree with you. If they are planning an all male mars expidition then the single gender experiment may be valid. That said, the experiment looks like total crap science from the get go. It's actually a poorly designed study on the medium term effects of being bedridden - a subject with a lot of literature behind it already. Too bad Fenymen isn't around anymore to rip them a new oriface.

  • Uh, that ain't weightlessness. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:36AM (#3757096) Journal
    It ain't even microgravity.

    We've been sending astronauts into space for extended periods. I'm sure NASA and the Russians are studying them.

    Who funded this nonsense?
  • But i'm sure some /.'s still couldn't get their karma to 50 in 3 months...

    "the men were each equipped with a mobile phone and an Internet-linked computer"
  • I wouldn't do it. I kind of like my limbs as they are: usable. I'm not sure how a sack of fluid for a calf can be walked upon, and I don't really want to know. This is going to make missions to Mars and other long-term space exploration really hard, this being more of an obstacle than any other facets.

    • The answer is technically complex but is there: artificial frickin' gravity. Nasa blows this off with every opportunity. Design a space station intended for long-term habitation and what the they do? Design a system gauranteed to destroy all muscle mass and assure lots of bone loss. One word...BRILLIANT!


      You want/expect people to spend any real length of time in space then you HAVE to design for artificial gravity, period. It wouldn't have to be much. You need just enough to allow exercise to continually put stresses on bone and tissue.


      This is basic stuff that Nasa ignores again and again. In any case, the Russians should have all the data you could possibly want about the detrimental effects of weightlessness. They still hold the long-term stay in space records, so by all means, duplicate their work again and again, ignore their data or think it will somehow turn out different when WE do it.


  • Strange... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:40AM (#3757125) Homepage

    Did it not occur to them that there are platforms [nasa.gov] on which they could test the effects of prolonged weightlessness? Or that studies [nasa.gov] have [nasa.gov] been [si.edu] done [nasa.gov], including similar lab studies [redcross.org]. Oh, well.

    • Like slashdot, they post the same stories again and again...

      What do they care, it's your tax dollars!

    • Sounds like the European Space Agency doesn't have enough to do.

      As of 1998, about 58 person-years in weightlessness have been accumulated. The record is 438 days, held by one of the Mir astronauts. Quite a bit is known; for example, bone loss in zero G is consistently about 1% per month. That's the worst effect; almost everything else is reversable.

      The general consensus is that six months in zero G is OK for healthy, flight-qualified people, but a year or more is pushing it.

  • 3 Months Lying on Their Backs? (Score:3, Funny)

    by eaeolian ( 560708 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:41AM (#3757137)
    ...well, now we know what happend to all the laid-off dotcom programmers.

  • Choosen Candidates. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lionchild ( 581331 )
    Take note of how the article points out these candidates were put through rigorous tests before being selected. They wanted ones that had some specific characteristics for mental elastisty. Those are some pretty rough demands.

    Here, after only 3 months, the one individual interviewed (which we don't know which group he was in,) was in rough shape when it came time to get back on his feet. It sounds like we've got along way to go, to get someone whose capable of remaining in microgravity for 2 years, in order to get to Mars. That, or we're going to have to design a ship that employs some form of gravity simulator.

    It's good to see progress, but we're still a long way from being able to send men to Mars.
    • We've had the technology to 'simulate' gravity since the industrial revolution. Haven't you seen 2001 the movie?

      Man... the people that wanna pass for nerds.

      • We've had the technology to 'simulate' gravity since the industrial revolution. Haven't you seen 2001 the movie?

        I've seen it. It's a fine movie for it's time. While we may have the tecnology to simulate gravity in space, why haven't we employed it yet? Shuttle missions don't seem to have the need for it, since their stays in microgravity are generally short. But have any of the space stations currently, or previously in service used some sort of gravity system?

    • > Here, after only 3 months, the one individual interviewed (which we don't know which group he was in,) was in rough shape when it came time to get back on his feet. It sounds like we've got along way to go, to get someone whose capable of remaining in microgravity for 2 years, in order to get to Mars. That, or we're going to have to design a ship that employs some form of gravity simulator.

      Psychology: Give me a laptop, a copy of CivIII or Alpha Centauri, and a DVD-ROM full of USENET postings to read and MP3z to listen to while I play. Upload some new warez to me halfway through the journey. That'll cover a good 8 hours a day.

      Gravity: Doesn't anyone remember the old Skylab footage of astronauts jogging around a cylindrical room -- sorta like a hamster wheel - except the wheel stayed fixed and the hamster ran around it ;-)

      Wouldn't that count as at least some simulated gravity (if you ran fast enough?) I can't see Coriolis forces being too disorienting - your legs may weigh more than your arms, and your head's still nearly weightless, but that's more of a tidal force, not a coriolis force.

      Jog around the track for an hour a day, maybe spend some time on an exercise bike (half an hour for the legs, half an hour for the arms). Strap legs to bed, do sit-ups - much easier without gravity, but it's still some exercise as you've still gotta move the upper half and slow it down again. Calisthenics.

      If I could get three months in space (not a hospital bed), I'd gladly spend a year in physiotherapy afterwards to rebuild my body to its previous functionality.

      Of course, if I could go to Mars, I wouldn't care if it was a one-way trip.

      It seems to me that going to Mars is like going to the New World in the 1400s. It's a long journey, in cramped conditions, with lousy food, and no medical help, and maybe a 20-30% chance that you'll die en route - on either half of the journey. Maybe we're looking for the wrong sorts of people. Instead of happy, well-adjusted folks with wives and kids to come home to, maybe we need people who are just a little bit nuts.

      So the first words beamed back from Mars won't be "One small step for a man...", more like "What happen? Somebody set up us the landing site! Your base is belong to us!" -- big deal. At least someone would make it there.

      One neophyte geologist on Mars could accomplish more in an hour than our most brilliant geologists have accomplished to date. For purposes of collecting samples and relaying data back to Earth, anyone could learn all they needed to know during the two-year trip. Think of it as a B.Sc. in Areology, offered as a two-year correspondence course, with the final exam to take place in situ :-)

  • They should study me i think i stayed in my chair for about 6 months after civ III came out. I think im ok. I am very fragele now and bleed whenever i brush up against stuff but at least i can take over the world with my grand army

  • sounds like the focus should shift (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sckeener ( 137243 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @11:56AM (#3757206)
    Nevertheless, organisers believe that, as well as helping astronauts, there should also be benefits for long-term hospital patients confined to their beds.

    Since there is still gravity in play, I'd say hospital patients are the real targets for this research....
    • What the researchers seem to have missed is that the "long-term hospital patients confined to their beds" are, erm, already doing this. This is like paying people to live in a warm climate to see how they cope with it - just go to Texas!

      Incidentally, I was confined to bed for a year, and what it got me was fat (I weighed the same at 7 years old as I did at 18!) better read (nothing else to do) and unable to walk properly for several weeks afterwards. Can I have my $20,000 please?
  • I understand that muscles can atrophy from lack of stress while in a weightless environment for prolonged periods, but surely there are creative enough engineers to design exercise equipment which doesn't require gravity to provide the resistance. Bowflex and similar machines use elastic bands to provide resistance. It seems like astronauts should be able to avoid muscular atrophy with a well designed fitness program.

    Am I missing something?
  • I wonder if they had the death trigger program (See earlier article) set up just in case one of them choked something while trying to eat on their backs.

    One of them mentions in the article something about viewing it as a personal challenge. Yeah, every morning I wake up and say "I think I'll lie in bed for 3 months. Why? Because it's there."

  • Sending Men to Mars (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I am not sure who is reading what, but my understanding is that the mission duration for travel between earth and mars at optimal launch time/window is only 6-7 months using current technology. The return is dependent on many things, but can be similar or up to 18 months.

    If the go ahead for nuclear propulsion, or alternatley some breakthrough in Ionic propulsion, is given, that trip time can be cut in half or more.
  • I am almost positive that I could program (and do most of my other jobs) from a lying down position. I wonder if they had any rules regarding what they could and could not do with the computers? Just a thought...
  • This sounds less like prep for weightlessness than preparation for the fluid tanks in the Matrix.

    Wait till they start passing out the blue pills... Oh yeah, it's called Viagra ;)

  • Why are they wasting time? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @12:47PM (#3757558) Homepage
    The Russians have the largest, most accurate database on such information.. The tests were done with real subjects in real microgravity, not some lame attempt with the slight possibility of simulating something.

    Come on, the Mir program is still full of wonderful data.. and couple that with the old data from Skylab and you have a pretty darn good basis for sending up 3 people for a 5 month stay. (with a control group of 3 here on the ground... hell let them lie around for 5 months..)

    it amazes me at how stupidity and quackery get's passed off as science and research nowdays..

    • It said in the article that they were applying counter measures to help the body adapt. They may have lots of data to see what happens in space (maybe enough to tell that lying on your back is a good substitute) but if the counter measures are new they probably don't have much data on them. Paying $20,000 a pop to get some untrained volunteers to stay in bed for three months is a heck of a lot cheaper than sticking them in a space station.
  • "Stage 1 of the European Space Agency study involved 14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs..."

    ... while us crazy loons in the US (Russia too, I hear) have the daft idea of conducting weightlessness studies in actual microgravity. Go figure!

    I'm waiting for the ESA to announce their intention to put people in space with a really tall ladder ala Eddie Izzard.
  • Should future phases of this experiment require hanging out for a few months in the Space Station, then someone tell these guys to give me a call.

  • Sounds like they only conclusion they'll be able to draw is that zero gee causes bed-sores and a stiff neck.

    Previous studies on women who spend too much time on their backs have determined that zero gee can cause pregnancy and may lead to hanging out with Italian men named Guido.
  • ...my first 3 months of marriage.

    involved 14 male volunteers spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their backs,

  • Whole test invalid, IMO (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Courageous ( 228506 ) on Monday June 24, 2002 @02:14PM (#3758198)

    Prolonged bedrest implies enormous amounts of enforced inactivity. Prolonged lack of exposure to gravity does not imply the same thing. Whole categories of peripheral edema and so forth can be caused by prolonged bedrest. This would extremely confound the experiment. I question the basis for the whole affair.

    C//
    • It is not only bedridden people and people in zero G who looses calcium. Especially women above 40 looses a lot of calcium, making them prone for osteporosis (the bones start to look like swiss cheese). Nobody knows the reason why this is happening, and there is no "cure", only "band-aids" in form of extra calcium.

      Believe me, fragile bones are costing the western societies millions of dollars every year. There is a huge amount of old people with broken hips and bones, in hospitals, or at home, needing extra care.
      Any research into the bodys mechanisms of regulating calcium etc, and thereby finding a "cure" instead of bandaids, have a huge financial, and human benefit.
  • This seems pointless. We already know that weightlessness is physiologically bad, and it also causes numerous practical problems. The cost of dealing with the medical problems and with also adapting tools and work practices to weightlessness probably are higher than just designing space stations and spacecraft to spin.

    Of course, for the time being, I'm a firm believer that manned space travel is a waste of money. For now, robotic probes are far more cost effective. We can get back to manned space travel once we have more experience in space.

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I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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