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NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed

Posted by samzenpus on from the I-know-someone-perfect-for-this dept.

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."

6 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. I'm in. by Mattygfunk1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  2. What's that movie? by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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. 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.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. To do today: by bryanp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
  4. And then...? by snarfies · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:And then...? by techpawn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
  5. They should call up Blizzard by Shivetya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

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    * Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.