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Skin-Tight Bodysuits Could Protect Astronauts From Bone Loss
jamie passes along a report about research from MIT's Man-Vehicle Laboratory into using "superhero-style" skinsuits to combat the effects of extended stays in microgravity on bone density in astronauts. (Abstract.) Quoting:
"Astronauts lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone mass for each month they spend in space. As far back as the Gemini missions, conditioning exercise regimes have been used to slow the rate of bone loss, but a 2001-2004 NASA-sponsored study showed that crew members aboard the International Space Station were still losing up to 2.7 percent of their interior bone material and 1.7 percent of outer hipbone material for each month they spent in space. ... With stirrups that loop around the feet, the elastic gravity skinsuit is purposely cut too short for the astronaut so that it stretches when put on — pulling the wearer's shoulders towards the feet. In normal gravity conditions on Earth, a human's legs bear more weight than the torso. Because the suit's legs stretch more than the torso section, the wearer's legs are subjected to a greater force — replicating gravity effects on Earth."
See? Seven of Nine's outfit was inspired by science after all.
Or does this sound like a bit of a stretch?
|Well then let's hope they start picking some sexier astronauts.
If we get hot female astronauts, skin tight bodysuits could protect from boner loss too.
thank you, thanks...I'll be here all week.
Zero gravity leather bondage is good for you!
Star Trek has known this for years.
Its that bone loss in astronauts is usually caused by Predators and Aliens.
Or it could be that it isn't as effective as gravity, so to give it an extra bump, the extra 8 hours are needed.
sounds damned uncomfortable
Probably less uncomfortable than having paperweight bones with serious fracture risks
*insert pithy sig here*
If that's the reason it brings up other concerns. In particular the 'taller in the morning that at night syndrome'.
Eg, it's natural for the human body to contract during the day and expand at night. Who knows what the long term effects of not doing this for an extended period of time are. I could see this as being either good or bad
My first thought is that this completely explains and legitimizes Col. Wilma Deering's wardrobe...
then I realized this also went for Cmdr. Rogers' and I threw up in my mouth a little.
The Digital Sorceress
Except instead of Rei or Asuka you get Buzz Aldrin... the future is a terrifying place children...
crazy dynamite monkey
The very important issue here is that while female astronauts are fit & clever, they're rarely hot. Most of them are in their late 30s / early 40s as they've spent 20+ years getting incredible credentials. The ones who have come from the military are somewhat butch, the civilians tend to be somewhat geeky. To wit -
http://www.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=imghp&biw=1424&bih=719&q=female+astronauts
Suits + exercise should both be used. But if you look at the physiology of bone, it's easy to see why both won't be enough. Bone is continually being destroyed and rebuilt by your body. The proportion of destruction to construction is controlled by stress (ignoring hormones and blood chemistry for the moment).
Gravity puts stress on your bones even when you lay down. Even in water. Any bit of movement magnifies it. Exercise in space is meant to substitute for this continual stress, but can't provide for continual, low level stress. These suits provide continual, low level stress to the skeleton. But it's still not the same.
Low level plus high level stress work great together. This is why some schools encourage kids to jump up and down, hard, to strengthen bones by including some high stress each day. But exercise and suits in space won't provide the same level to the entire skeleton that even a few hops on Earth plus a day of video games will.
There is one more technology used on Earth to selectively strengthen bones. Maybe it can provide the final missing stress. It turns out sound waves stress bone too. Audible sound would be too loud. But ultrasound is commonly used to accelerate bone healing and strengthening. It's not inconceivable that the skin tight suit could incorporate PVDF sheets that could transmit ultrasound into an astronaut's bones, applying it to understressed areas. It could even work as a cap to reduce bone loss in the skull.
Or just build a big 'ol hamster wheel.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Problem is, we're not really at that scale yet. Takes a pretty big station to achieve a reasonable gravity with spin.
Alright, the issue here is that if you don't make the ring fucking HUGE then you actually end up with the Coriolis effect causing extreme nausea and all the astronauts vomiting. So your "solution" would:
A) Cost a fuckload of money.
B) Be completely impractical to get into space and install
C) Not work anyway.
I find it funny that every Tom, Dick, and Harry without a high school education thinks that they're a brilliant engineer whenever they read about some problem that hundreds of experienced engineers couldn't solve. Seriously, take ten seconds and go google your idea BEFORE touting it as the magical solution that all of these foolish NASA engineers didn't think of.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Adding a rotating portion to the station would be introducing a gyroscope. Doing so would be problematic.
Take a bicycle wheel, spin it on its axis and then try to tilt it.
How much fuel are you willing to spend to keep the station oriented the right way?
How much mechanicals are you willing to spend money on to steer the solar panels if you aren't going to be using thrusters to orient the whole station?
How big is your budget? Funding isn't unlimited. You need to make choices. If you go with a rotating section, what are you going to eliminate elsewhere to compensate for the cost?
The only lack of thinking in this case is on your part.
--
BMO
Of course, those other concerns are already disrupted in 0g as is...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Uhm. Spinning life support modules are the medium-long term, barring artificial gravity of course.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
So many science fiction stories have shown that one can simulate gravity with centrifugal force by rotating a craft/station. Why don't we do this with the international space station?
or should us "big boned" people just become astronauts?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
We can't afford to send much material up there, space stations have to be fairly small with sections having diameters of maybe 3-4 meters, you cannot make a centrifuge out of that.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Unless they cut it wrong & it gives you a wedgie. I can see the observation tapes now --- 6 months of an astronaut picking their body-stocking out of their ass.
You've no understanding of history. Wizards come from out of the shadows all the time. You don't NEED a PHd to create magic. It just makes you look more publishable when you do have one.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I find it funny that every Tom, Dick, and Harry without a high school education thinks that they're a brilliant engineer whenever they read about some problem that hundreds of experienced engineers couldn't solve. Seriously, take ten seconds and go google your idea BEFORE touting it as the magical solution that all of these foolish NASA engineers didn't think of.
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
— Arthur C(harles) Clarke
"Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. "
— Simon Newcomb
"Radio has no future."
- Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist.
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."
- Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer, 1926.
"Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value."
- Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865
"This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. "
- Western Union internal memo, 1878
"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches? "
- The Quarterly Review, England (March 1825)
"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
- Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859)
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch
"It is an idle dream to imagine that automobiles will take the place of railways in the long distance movement of passengers."
- American Railroad Congress, 1913
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, President of Digital Corporation, 1977
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas J. Watson Snr., IBM Chairman, 1943
"There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the Moon because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the Earth's gravity."
- Dr. Forest Ray Moulton, University of Chicago astronomer, 1932.
"Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is a ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet Professor Physiology, Toulouse, 1872
"‘With regard to the electric light, much has been said for and against it, but I think I may say without contradiction that when the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it, and no more will be heard of it.’"
- Erasmus Wilson Oxford University professor, 1878
"The so-called theories of Einstein are merely the ravings of a mind polluted with liberal, democratic nonsense which is utterly unacceptable to German men of science."
- Dr. Walter Gross, 1940
On Nuclear Power, "any one who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine... "
- Ernest Rutherford (1933)
"X-rays are a hoax. "
- Lord Kelvin, ca. 1900
Let's look at your list.
"Cold Fusion" should be changed to "Cold Fusion the way Ponds and Fleischman" said it can happen.
Anti-gravity stands until we REALLY know how gravity works instead of just watching what it does. Trivial anti-gravity devices such as rope, elevators and helicopters etc are exempt.
As for electronic telepathy, once again WTF is telepathy? There is no answer right or wrong to examples of such a device and it could even be argued that we have such a thing now with radio, microphones and headphones since information gets from one brain to another with a bit of help from mouth, audio and radio.
Weather Control? I had the good fortune from when I was seven years old to go to a scout hall that had a "geiger vortex gun" cloud seeding device from the 1900s out the front, so I got an exposure to a silly example of psuedoscience bullshit at an early age. It's a very long running scam which is why it usually gets put on the "impossible" list. We don't yet know enough to make such a thing work but scammers getting money from the desperate have been pretending to do so for a very long time. Maybe it will happen some day, but for now it should just ring alarm bells and encourage people to take a close look at the scientific equivalent of the Nigerian spam scam before they lose their cash.
I don't understand why you have transmutation on that list. It happens in nature during radioactive decay, and if you look in the sky during the day you'll see an example of heavier elements being formed from light elements.
Wireless power - why is that on the list? Radio is an low wattage implementation of it and you can have a radio that works with nothing but what it picks up from it's antenna to drive a small speaker (1930's crystal radio). Your toothbrush charger is half of a transformer and Faraday would have be able to look at it and explain to you how it works in seconds - it's not the "wireless power" that is being dismissed as impractical by anyone just a transformer that has more losses with increasing distance.
Possible does not mean practical in all situations - Tesla's idea of setting up a current between a resonating earth and the newly discovered ionosphere had a few major practical problems but we only know that from hindsight. Being on the opposite side of the earth to such a generator would be shocking to say the least (arc from ionosphere to ground). The reason wireless power is on the list is every now and again somebody half understands very well known laws of physics, comes up with something completely wrong based on loophole that isn't there to think they can get far better transmission than we have, and then shouts it from the rooftops without checking first if reality agrees. It's also used in scams. The space elevator power transmission thing is a semi-scam that is amusing. You have theoretical material making up the beanstalk that is one of the best electrical conductors known and you make the elevator powered by a laser and photovoltaic? That's just a way to lose power and pretend you are making progress until the theoretical material for the beanstalk exists.
Thank the heavens they've finally worked it all out, at last! Can you believe, all of this time, we actually thought skin already did that?