An Alarming Discovery In an Astronaut's Bloodstream (theatlantic.com) 90
Thelasko shared this article from the Atlantic about a surprising medical observation on the International Space Station: An astronaut was carrying out an ultrasound on their own body as part of a new study, guided in real time by a specialist on the ground. A similar test before the astronaut launched to space had come back normal. But now the scan showed a clump of blood...
Before the astronauts launched, researchers measured blood flow in their jugular vein in seated, supine, and tilted positions. The readings looked normal. The researchers had the astronauts repeat the ultrasounds during their missions on the ISS. Scans showed that blood flow in the vein stalled in five of the 11 astronauts. "Sometimes it was sloshing back and forth a bit, but there was no net-forward movement," Marshall-Goebel says. Seeing stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein is rare, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, such as when people sit still for hours on a plane...
All the astronauts were considered to be in good health before they launched. And when they came home, the conditions vanished in nearly all of them. When the researchers analyzed the data, they found that a second astronaut may have developed a blood clot no one had seen while they were in orbit. But no one experienced any health troubles. "None of the crew members actually had any negative clinical outcomes," Marshall-Goebel says.
An associate professor of space medicine at the International Space University in France tells the Atlantic that the findings were compelling. "I think we need to understand this before we embark on long-duration missions where the astronaut would be so far away that we wouldn't be able to help them in the case of a medical emergency."
Before the astronauts launched, researchers measured blood flow in their jugular vein in seated, supine, and tilted positions. The readings looked normal. The researchers had the astronauts repeat the ultrasounds during their missions on the ISS. Scans showed that blood flow in the vein stalled in five of the 11 astronauts. "Sometimes it was sloshing back and forth a bit, but there was no net-forward movement," Marshall-Goebel says. Seeing stagnant blood flow in this kind of vein is rare, she says; the condition usually occurs in the legs, such as when people sit still for hours on a plane...
All the astronauts were considered to be in good health before they launched. And when they came home, the conditions vanished in nearly all of them. When the researchers analyzed the data, they found that a second astronaut may have developed a blood clot no one had seen while they were in orbit. But no one experienced any health troubles. "None of the crew members actually had any negative clinical outcomes," Marshall-Goebel says.
An associate professor of space medicine at the International Space University in France tells the Atlantic that the findings were compelling. "I think we need to understand this before we embark on long-duration missions where the astronaut would be so far away that we wouldn't be able to help them in the case of a medical emergency."
After billions of years of evolution (Score:1)
it would seem normal that the body needs a bit of gravity to function properly. The long journeys will demand it. It will need a very big space station to avoid the 'angular' thing, whatever they call that.
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Simple solution. Just launch two crafts at the same time -- but be sure to keep them separated by an appropriate distance. One carries the astronauts, the other carries a black hole. Problem solved! (Although, I'll bet Musk has already tweeted this solution so I'm probably late to the game).
Re:After billions of years of evolution (Score:5, Informative)
Without the mockery of black holes, the concept of spacecraft large enough to spin for gravity, and to sleep under even modest gravity are quite old. It is _expensive_ and carries very real danger. The spacecraft have to be much stronger, much more massive to be stronger, and typically much larger to avoid Coriolis force disorienting scientists.
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If the black hole is only producing 1g on you, tidal forces would be insignificant. That's because it would be a really small black hole, or one that is really far away.
If that 1g black hole is so tiny and close that tidal forces are a problem, then you also have hawking radiation to worry about.
On the (literal) bright side, hawking radiation generated by that tiny black hole could be used as an extremely efficient mass-to-energy power generator.
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We need to find out how much acceleration is needed to avoid long term effects on humans. Maybe 1m/sec^2 (or 1 tenth G ) will be enough.
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2 spacecraft tethered together, or perhaps tethered to a central space craft which could even be a low g booster. Perhaps 300 metre diameter for the tether. Seems the hard part would be spinning it up and back down.
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I wonder how much gravity you need to avoid these clots forming.
It might be possible to gently accelerate for the whole trip, just enough to provide the tiny bit of gravity needed. You would need a nuclear power source but you probably want one if you are on your way to Mars anyway.
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Coninuous acceleration might be one approach, but you wouldn't get the "Hohmann orbit: efficiency boost for your limited fuel supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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and stretch a 1km cable between them.
Put a large, heavy propulsion unit in the
middle of the cable, and start the propulsion unit rotating.
Keep the artificial "gravity" down to 0.1G
and there will be no need for extra strength.
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Oh. Oh, my. "Put a large heavy propulsion unit in the middle of the cable". Keeping such a contraption from wrapping around the central propulsion unit, or shredding it, is an exciting design prospect. So is a 1 kilometer cable, at 0.1 g. If we run the numbers: The critical numbers for the amount of stress on the cable is the mass of each spacecraft, times 0.1 g. As an example, the ISS weighs roughly 900,000 pounds, or roughly 400,000 kilos. Multiply that by 0.1 g, and we have to handle 90,000 pounds of fo
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Maybe some anti coagulation pills would provide a simpler solution than a mini black hole.
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Maybe some anti coagulation pills would provide a simpler solution than a mini black hole.
While much simpler than the black hole idea it carries a different set of problems. Minor cuts can become major bleeding incidents. Hitting something hard enough to bruise can become a serious concern. Even bumping your head could have serious implications. I'd guess that a lot of women would prefer engineering the black hole solution during every menstrual cycle too
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Yep. We evolved to live 'well' here and only here, on Terra Firma (Earth). It seems obvious that placing us in any other environment is going to screw with our physiological systems that have been fine-tuned to work with Earth's gravity over millions and (to some extent) billions of years. Living in a space station, on the moon, on Mars or any other alien body/environment that doesn't exactly mimic Earth's gravitational influence will surely screw with our biological processes in more ways than one can imagine. We're only seeing the tip of potential issues, and anyone willing to take a vaca to Mars better well be aware that they are likely going to be irreversibly damaged in some fashion or another, assuming they make it back in one piece at all. I think true long term space travel will have to wait until we can master CRISPR like techniques to genetically modify humans to be able to withstand the rigors of space and different gravitational environments.
The really interesting part is that the opposite may also be true. If there are beings that have evolved to live in space they may very well have one hell of a hard time living for long periods of time on earth. .
Yes for humans to become a space fairing race we will have to develop bodies physiology capable of existing in low gravity for long periods of time. Perhaps this is an important step in the evolution of intelligent life. Genetic engineering a new race of humans for life off this planet is not neces
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No beings have evolved to live in space. There are no resources in space so that would make zero sense.
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There are no resources in space
Sorry, what? Almost **ALL** the resources in the entire universe are in space. They're thinly distributed, but other than a few artificially created elements with half-lives in the milliseconds every resource imaginable is available in great abundance.
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If there are beings that have evolved to live in space
Of course there is life in space. [tass.com] Life finds a way.
for humans to become a space fairing race we will have to develop bodies physiology capable of existing in low gravity for long periods of time
Or, you know, just spin the space station. Once we get past tiny capsules we can barely get into orbit, this just won't be a problem.
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Venus might work, at least as far a gravity, at 90% of Earth. It's somewhat habitual at the right altitude, might even be able to go outside with basically scuba gear.
Phew, it's just blood clots (Score:5, Funny)
For a moment I thought maybe they'd seen the Alien in there.
Regular Excercise (Score:2)
Problem can be solved by regularly timed exercise to ensure proper blood flow, how often is the question, bending and stretching every fifteen minutes, sleep of course presents a different problem, two hour power naps with exercise between. The fluids must flow and it is designed to be just good enough to breed, based upon pretty regular movement and flexing of the body.
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The astronauts do get exercise on a daily basis. Apparently it doesn't prevent this particular problem. Most likely because in space, unlike on earth, no amount of moving their limbs changes their orientation relative to a gravitational field.
It may be worth looking at zero g exercises that involve more rotation to see if that might be enough.
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On what basis do you think this will successfully treat the problem? It may require sleep under gravity. The astronauts, now, have rigorous exercise regimes to treat the _known_ problems. What makes you think that this regime will help?
Centripetal Gravity (Score:5, Insightful)
More and more, I'm starting to think a giant spinning spacecraft may be the best way forward if we are to travel to Mars.
Stasis isn't going to cut it if these health effects are directly the result of extended zero-g exposure.
This is gonna get expensive...
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In theory, yes. There are many, many science fiction stories involving just such apparatus, including some where most of the mas is in one section and the other is moving much more rapidly around their common center of gravity, and may be where the astronauts sleep.
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Meh. None of this is worse than a traditional, single vessel that would also be destroyed by any sufficiently big impact. If you're on your way to Mars and your spaceship hits an asteroid, you're doing something very wrong.
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Hard to avoid a pea or baseball sized asteroid.
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If an asteroid slams into the module with the people, they all die
Spoiler alert, if you did the split the crew into two teams and a asteroid slams into one of the modules, they're all going to die anyway. As soon as you remove the counter weight, the non-hit craft is going to go flying off in a trajectory perpendicular to the axis of spin, putting them potentially millions of miles off course over a month's timeframe. So technically you're right in that the other crew doesn't die, instead they go randomly off into some trajectory that no one can ever save them from, wit
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Its very expensive to design a structure to take that. You could never spin the ISS for example. It would come apart.
But you could build a static, cylindrical, running track. This was used on skylab and it would be a great way to give you exercise and gravity at the same time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But it would still put some stress on the structure.
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In order to have decent amount of gravity without having to spin it up to a puke-inducing speed, you need to make the thing pretty big. Much bigger than things we can launch into space in one piece. If you can live with just 10% of normal gravity and a rotation period of 30 seconds, you need a rotation radius of 72ft. So if you're imagining a ring-shaped space station it would have a diameter of around 150ft and circumference over 450ft! That's a way bigger project than the ISS and still nowhere near 1g. If
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3 cosmonauts died during their return to Earth due to the door on their Soyuz not being sealed combined with not wearing helmets.
I don't think any of them spent much more then a year in space. Hmm, Valeri Polyakov at 437 days (678 total days over multiple missions) and he seems to be doing fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's also cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev with a total of 747 days in space during three different missions.
What if we really can't go out for a lot of time? (Score:1)
Let's suppose this is a huge problem for a long term space mission in a significant quantity of people in the space. For example, sending several thousands of people to Mars.
This could mean that we, humans, are designed for living only in our planet. Then, if we like to explore the universe, we have just some "real" steps at hand.
Re:What if we really can't go out for a lot of tim (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not really a problem, as the article says, once you arrive at a destination with sufficient gravity, the symptoms go away. There are plenty of people that have blood clots that come and go unnoticed even here on earth and there's plenty of activity that increases the chances of both the clots and an ill effect of the clot. People doing the exploring are generally very healthy specimens, it's unlikely they are at any higher risk due to blood clot forming than someone who's obese and smoking.
On the other hand, over time, evolution will find the best specimens and overcome any limitations the body currently has if necessary for procreation and maintenance of the species.
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Evolution only optimizes to maximize the reproduction potential of the genetic lineage, with survival only being a factor insofar as it influences reproduction potential. Blood clots are usually survivable with modern medicine unless they happen in a very bad spot (e.g. the vessels servicing the brain, the heart, or the lungs).
Prophylactic Anticoagulants? (Score:3, Insightful)
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The blood thinners require very careful dosage and monitoring. Astronauts are under profound physical stress because they are working _very hard_ every day. It's partly why they eat so much: Small women in orbit consume roughly 1900 calories per day. Larger men consume 3200 calories per day. That is a _lot_ of calories, it is _hideously_ expensive to send food to orbit, and NASA would not spend that money if they did not have to. Given that level of physical activity, they get bumps and bruises and scrapes
Re:Prophylactic Anticoagulants? (Score:5, Informative)
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Launch costs have come down a lot since that program. It's only half that now.
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The blood thinners require very careful dosage and monitoring.
That's not hard though. There are small portable monitors that only require a drop of blood from a finger tip, similar to glucose monitors. In stable persons, with a regular diet, measuring once per 14 days is enough to keep a stable level.
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You're assuming those monitors will work in space. I doubt they were designed to. Perhaps NASA could build something similar that does.
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The concern about anticoagulants seems a bit overblown. My dad took warfarin for years, and he was a remodeler. Bumps, bruises, scrapes, cuts, lacerations, splinters, collapsing scaffolds, nail gun injuries, smashed fingers, you name it. He bled longer than he did without it, but nothing dramatic. Other posters mentioned monitoring, but other than a weekly blood test at the doctor's office for the first month or so he never did.
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Well any blood thinner will increase the risk of bleeding
That is also true for regular people on Earth, and yet these medications are prescribed on a regular basis. Warfarin type drugs can be counteracted quickly with a shot of vitamin K, if needed.
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Well any blood thinner will increase the risk of bleeding
That is also true for regular people on Earth, and yet these medications are prescribed on a regular basis. Warfarin type drugs can be counteracted quickly with a shot of vitamin K, if needed.
Yes but we know all the issues with people on earth. Plus on earth we have things like hospitals. What we don't know is what 0G adds to the equation. Plus, no hospitals in space. You are also really over-simplifying things. Yes you can counter-act them, but if you have a brain bleed it gets more complex than just giving someone a vitamin K shot.
I'm always amazed at how hostile space is (Score:2)
This is not good and really a serious possible health problem.
I can see other people saying that this can be fixed with rotating structures providing simulated gravity but there's literally no studies done on living at acceleration levels less than 1g other than the expected initial dizziness that will occur until the body adapts to continually rotating (yet another unnatural state for the body).
I'm very pro-space, but clearly a lot of work needs to be done to a) understand all the issues human bodies and b
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From the beginning of the space age, there were doctors around claiming that disaster was right around the corner. No matter what they had predicted wrong, they came back with another dire prediction that was just beyond current experience. That would get disproved, then another, and another, and another. People use to warn against the danger of going the breakneck speed of 15 mph in a steam engine.
This is just more of the same. Bloot clots happen all the time, it's a real problem with long airplane flights
Blood clots in the neck happen all the time (Score:2)
on long airplane flights?
They happen in the legs, not in the neck, which is what was found here.
Re:I'm always amazed at how hostile space is (Score:4, Insightful)
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> I may be mistaken, but if designed and engineered properly, I don't think a space ship/station using centripetal force to simulate gravity would cause dizziness or any bodily sensation of rotating.
Please, define "properly designed". A centripetal force of a few percent of gravity, in a spacecraft with a spinning radius of 20 meters, might not cause confusing Coriolis forces for the astronauts. A spacecraft 5 meters in diameter spinning enough to cause one gravity worth of centripetal force for an astr
At what point is "a few percent" == free fall? (Score:2)
Going back to my original post, there is literally no research done on what percentage of a g would provide the same benefits as a full g on Earth. In the reading that I've done, it seems that 20% plus is required for systems to work normally - 1/6th of a g didn't appear to be enough for the Apollo astronauts on the moon. Yet, that is ALL the available research on the subject.
Re: I'm always amazed at how hostile space is (Score:1)
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Where it's not similar to the elevator experiment is the potential for feeling the
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Humans detect changes in acceleration. A rotating vessel is constantly changing acceleration. How large the vessel, and how slowly it must rotate, for the change to be beneath the human threshold for detection are valid questions.
Of course there are windows... (Score:2)
Astronauts would notice the rotation if they sat and stared out a window, but if you think about the ISS, it's not exactly full of windows.
Um, there are plenty of windows. Watch "A Year In Space" on Netflix, 12 fascinating episodes.
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The difference is that in a rotating space ship, gravity is not constant: it increases toward the outside surface. So if you change your distance to the ground, gravity changes and you experience the Coriolis effect. To make this effect negligible, the space ship has to have a diameter of several hundred meters (at 1 G). [stackexchange.com]
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modules would be about right.
Lack of Gravity (Score:2)
All of a sudden that gravitational pull is suddenly absent, but the heart is still pushing blood throughout the body given that aforementioned gravitational constant. What effects does this create? The heart is still pushing blood through
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I enjoyed your comment, the general gist being insightful. But, a correction.
would this not create a situation where the blood in the body is being pushed through too fast, thus resulting in these clots?
For blood, the prime principle is "a rolling stone gathers no moss". Moving blood flows. Stagnant blood clots. It is part of of Virchow's triad (the guy in the latter 19th century who first understood the principles of blood clotting). It is a largely inviolate principle of blood and clotting that if it stalls, it clots. If it moves, it doesn't. There are special circumstances under pathological conditions, such as atheroscl
Are multiple astronauts sharing a body? (Score:2)
An astronaut was carrying out an ultrasound on their own body
That's your problem right there, each astronaut should have his/her own body.
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An astronaut was carrying out an ultrasound on their own body
That's your problem right there, each astronaut should have his/her own body.
Don't you know how expensive it is to send people into space? The more astronauts you can squeeze in to one body, the better.
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Useless headline (Score:2)
malfunctioning equipment? (Score:2)