Slashdot Mirror
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. "
So lying on your back conducting all activities makes one weightless? Guess I should tell her to get on top more often...
--Look behind you.
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.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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.
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?
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
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.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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.
http://www.davetansley.com - you proba
$20,000 for three months? Wow. That sure beats those cheapskates at NASA; they only spent $100 / day, or ~$9,000 for the three months.
like in the 2001 movie and countless SciFi stories, as rotating wheels which make their own artificial gravity? Jogging around the endless loop / track would be great exercise.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
222$ per day.
It should be read as "spending 3 months carrying out all activities whilst lying on their bucks"
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
$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.).
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...
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
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?
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.
Did it not occur to them that there are platforms on which they could test the effects of prolonged weightlessness? Or that studies have been done, including similar lab studies. Oh, well.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
...well, now we know what happend to all the laid-off dotcom programmers.
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.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
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.
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
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....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
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?
-- Adam
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."
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
Like slashdot, they post the same stories again and again...
What do they care, it's your tax dollars!
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
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.
It's a joke folks.... No scales, weightlessness... nevermind.
"I can almost hear my father in the mid to late 1960s saying "But really, what on earth is going to the Moon gonna do for mankind?"
Heh, I think an episode of the Simpsons would answer your question:
"The Moon belongs to America..."
"Derp de derp."
what did the moon do for humanity? not much i would imagine since we haven't been there in about 30 years.
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..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"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.
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.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
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.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
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.
Fooz Meister
1) Where did you mud 2) Did you ever pkill me? ;)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
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.
Two ways: 1) a sheet of frickin' ultra-dense, ultra-heavy, neutronium for flooring, or 2) centripedal frickin' force. I'd say it is easier to do the centripedal frickin' force thing.
At least one of the manned Mars rocket designs includes spinning two habitation pods at the ends of tethers for artificial frickin' gravity. As for the space station...donut shape ala _2001:A frickin' Space Odyssy_ is a nifty way. Big and ambitious. Building such a beast would take time so Nasa should be happy with such a project: they'd be exposing astronauts to zero-g for extended periods of time while it is built to the point it could be spun up. They'd be happy because they caused chronic wasting in their astronauts, and we'd end up with, ultimately, a space station with artificial frickin' gravity.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.