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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."
Can I bring a friend? In all seriousness, what if you need to rub one out?
I lie in bed all the time:
"Yes, I love you"
"Yes, it was good"
"No, I was not thinking about _her_"
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Is there a retroactive program?
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.
Is it just me or did anyone else imagine a test subject waking up one day to see a big black monolith standing at the foot of his bed?
I think it makes a world of difference in considering the "opportunity".
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
And if you really want to know more, they published all their findings for all their experiments in five hefty PDFs.
My work here is dung.
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
Will they also pay to rehabilitate you and your degenerated muscles afterwards?
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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
NASA wants me to lie in bed? I learned to do that in college: "Yes, I'll love you tomorrow." / "No, there are no other girls in my life but you..." / "Of course I'll respect you tomorrow..."
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.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
alright boys, here's the plan:
1. lie in bed.
2. get fed.
3. profit!
sound good? let's get to bed!
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
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It'd really suck if you got to day 89, and then had a family emergency.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I broke my back a few years ago and needed to lie flat on my back for three weeks (nurses rolled me onto my side once a day to wash my back). In that time my legs had become about 1/3 thinner. Not that I cared too much - I wasn't paralysed.
If I had chosen not to have surgery, I would have needed to lie on my back for twelve weeks. I was told that it would take about two years to get back to normal strength if I'd gone down that route...
You couldn't pay me enough to be in bed for 90 days.
I'm not against it for the truly needy, but it is commonly abused. The government is paying some people to sit around and watch Oprah. Welfare shouldn't be used to promote a lifestyle of laziness for those who could work.
Ok, let me have a Take #2:
The government's been doing that for people for years. They're called federal employees.
How much artificial gravity do you need? 1.0 G? 0.2 G?
Will some experimental drugs help counteract the effects of weightlessness?
Can the problems be alleviated with specific exercises during weightlessness?
How long will it take to recover after returning to gravity? If an astronaut is weightless on a trip to Mars, can he be back up in a week or a month?
If you want to treat something as a problem to overcome, you might need to know more than "It's bad", ok?
Considering you are working 24/7, that is pretty low pay rate of under $8/hr. Maybe starving students might take them up on this. I think only 20 year olds would fully recover from this as well.
I might consider doing it for Ten Times that amount $150k to $200K. Not worth risking my health otherwise.
Not to mention this would probably feel like torture after a week. My back gets sore if I lay in bed too long on Sunday mornings.
It sounds like a lot of money, but 90 days in bed will cause a lot of your body atrophy, heart, lungs, legs, etc. Not to mention a lack of vascular assistance in blood circulation could cause clots.
The (former) Governor of New York will pay $5000 per hour. Of course the requirements are different than NASA's.
There was a similar research program in the USSR - subjects lied on bed for 6 months without moving.
As far as I remember, one subject broke his femur when he tried to stand for the first time after the test. Also, all subjects experienced frequent orthostatic collapses (i.e. they fainted then they tried to stand up).
The damage was quickly corrected by using calcium gluconate injections and physical therapy.
Alas, I can't find a source for this in English.
and $4500 for having to live in Galveston, TX.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
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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.
You are welcome on my lawn.