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]

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

What's that movie?

[QuantumG]

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.

To do today:

[bryanp]

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.

And then...?

[snarfies]

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

may be more difficult than some may imagine

[v1]

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.

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

[Nullav]

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:And then...?

[techpawn]

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:To do today:

[morgan_greywolf]

Add:

Invent cure for deep vein thrombosis.

They should call up Blizzard

[Shivetya]

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:What's that movie?

[MBGMorden]

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 if the spin was the right speed. Truthfully though, it seems like such a thing would work best for long duration non-stop journeys like a Mars mission. On a Lunar mission it's not long enough to really need it. On space stations, it seems like docking with a spinning module on the end of a tether would be nearly impossible, so they'd have to spin it down and then back up between dockings, which would be very energy intensive.

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

[MadMidnightBomber]

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

Re:What's that movie?

[corbettw]

But the department needs to spend its budget or else face cuts next year.

That's understandable, but aren't there other things they can spend tax payers' money on?

Re:I'm in.

[tsjaikdus]

Is this inclusive or exclusive removing the blood clots after those 90 days?

Re:Paying People To Lie in Bed

[PopeRatzo]

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 our federal government in the form of exploration "incentives" and handouts from the Fed to buy your competitors.

Are you a banker? You're getting a hell of a lot of "welfare" by being able to borrow money from the government at 2% and turn around and loan it to your credit card customers at 30%;

Generally, folks who are complaining about "lazy welfare recipients" are those who want government to leave them alone when it comes to profits but asks for socialism when it comes to their losses.

When the government gives you $400 it's called "welfare" and you are looked down on. When the government gives you $400Million it's called "capitalism" and you are considered a shrewd and successful businessman.

Re:USSR did this too.

[Anonymous Coward]

So give a source in Russian. Otherwise you're saying "I can prove this but most people reading wouldn't be able to understand it so I just won't bother"