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Lord British To Conduct Experiments On ISS

Posted by timothy on from the hear-he-throws-a-good-castle-party dept.

CR0WTR0B0T writes "Richard Garriott, AKA Lord British, will be part of three experiments on the International Space Station. 'Garriott has a ticket to the space station because he is an orbital spaceflight client of Space Adventures, the only company that provides commercial human space missions ... Garriott will be the first person in space who has had photorefractive keratectomy eye surgery. NASA has approved the PRK procedure for astronauts but has not yet been able to test its effects. Garriott will help scientists figure out if visual acuity of a PRK patient changes in orbit as inner eye pressure increases by up to 50% during space flights.' Mostly, NASA wants to know if he can heal himself or provide resurrection to the other astronauts in case the experiments goes awry."

5 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. more info by aneurysm36 · · Score: 4, Informative

    time article
    http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1844160,00.html

    wired article
    http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-09/ff_starcity

    --
    ------ hi mom
  2. PRK by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hurts like a bitch for a week, and takes about 2 weeks for your vision to clear, but works great for those of us who are, for some reason or another, bad candidates for LASIK.

    I wish I'd done it sooner.

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    1. Re:PRK by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, I haven't noticed any bad side effect, other than needing reading glasses, and that's due to age.

      I'm 45, and because I was *SO* nearsighted, my near vision was actually pretty decent, but because of my age,
      I now need reading glasses. If I was younger, I suspect I wouldn't need them.

      The myopia canceled out the age-related presbyopia.

      As a side note, I suffered from chronic erosions, and this seems to have cured it as well.

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    2. Re:PRK by Sibko · · Score: 2, Informative

      What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two procedures?

      LASIK Advantages:
      * Quick healing (driving vision the next day in most cases)
      * Little chance of haze
      * Re-treatments are easier

      Disadvantages:
      * Uses more tissue
      * Can have flap complications (rare occurrence in good hands)

      PRK Advantages:
      * Uses less tissue
      * No flap created so no chance of flap complication

      Disadvantages:
      * Healing takes longer than LASIK (driving vision in 4 to 14 days)
      * Slight risk of haze (little risk with modern laser and adjunctive chemical therapy)
      * Delayed epithelial healing

      We do approximately 30% of our patients with PRK and find that the end result of the two procedures to be excellent.

      This is from the FAQ of the guys who did my eye surgery. [I had PRK done, since I'm going in the army.] http://www.seewell.ca/index.html

  3. Re:Should be fine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    You can't patch in space.

    Um, yes, http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/rtf/tps/repairapp.pdf yes you can. (PDF)