Long-Term Effects of Weightlessness

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. "

Comments

The money

[Violet Null]

$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.

Re:What will stage 1 prove?

[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.

Not comparable

[af_robot]

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.

Re:So why aren't space stations being planned

[BlowCat]

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.

Sending Men to Mars

[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.

Size matters...

[J23SE]

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.

Re:So why aren't space stations being planned

[Thagg]

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