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Virtual Reality Helmet Designed For Deep Space Surgery
pigrabbitbear writes in with a link about a virtual reality helmet designed to help people deal with medical emergencies in space. "Humans are pretty fragile. A bad break in your hip can mean surgery and months of rehab. That's pretty bad, but what if you fall and break your hip on the Moon, or even Mars? You'd be hundreds of thousands or millions of miles from a fully stocked hospital and a surgeon with steady hands. There's the option of doctor-assisted surgery from Earth — a fellow astronaut performing the surgery with remote assistance from a doctor via video link. But the lengthy communications delay make this a poor option anywhere further than the Moon. Luckily for our Mars-bound descendants, the European Space Agency has a solution: an information-loaded assisted reality helmet that will let anyone identify and perform minor surgery to repair injuries."
link
Then you'd have to listen to endless "damnit Jim, I'm a doctor not an engineer". Maybe if she's kinda hot in a milf-y way, but what if she has a pesky son on board... I suppose its inevitable, eventually.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
TFA mentions wider applications, such as first responders, antarctica, 3rd world countries, and other remote locations. It seems like that would be a much larger user base than space. Why is the focus so much on space applications? It seems like something that would be so useful on Earth, that could also happen to be used in space, not the other way around.
Then you'd have to listen to endless "damnit Jim, I'm a doctor not an engineer". Maybe if she's kinda hot in a milf-y way, but what if she has a pesky son on board... I suppose its inevitable, eventually.
Oh no, was not thinking that at all. Was more along the lines of an engineer who is also a surgeon, or a geologist who is also a surgeon, etc.
Wormhole specialist who is also a Gynecologist ?
When all else fails, you've won.
A new movie with Samuel L. Jackson
I'm sick and tired of these mother-f**ing SNAKES ON THIS Mother-F***ING SPACE PLANE!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I have to ask, why not just send a physician along to any long term deep space mission? There are 5 aerospace medicine residency programs in the country, not to mention the fact that anyone applying for the astronaut positions at NASA gets credited with "work experience" for having completed an MD degree. I believe there are even a few currently active astronauts who are physicians. There isn't much substitute for someone who actually knows what they're doing, and as a (near legendary) trauma surgeon/professor at my medical school is fond of repeating, you can pack a "black bag" with about 10 pounds of equipment that will have you ready for just about anything in the woods, from a emergency tracheostomy to an open appendectomy.
I think GP was reading too much James Blish recently, and got a bit... "spindizzy".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The article summary here is wrong, as it uses the term "deep space", but they're really talking about injuries happening on Moon or Mars missions, which are nowhere near "deep space". AFAIC, "deep space" is interstellar space, someplace we've never been.
This helmet thing might be OK for problems on the Moon, as it's only a few light-seconds away IIRC. But Mars? Forget it. It takes ~15 minutes for a signal to get there from Earth.
The previous AC is right; we need to think bigger. Maybe generation ships to the stars are a little ways out, but we need to do a lot more than just sending 4 people into space at a time to go hit golf balls.
Astronauts have a great variety of skills. A doctor could also conduct biological or chemical experiments. And it's not like she wouldn't do anything when someone isn't ill, having a skilled person to constantly monitor the health of the crew would lead to a better understanding of the effects of space on the human body, and would also help to detect problems early before they become serious.
Unless you're really old (in which case you wouldn't be going to the Moon any time soon), breaking your hip does not mean hip replacement surgery. That's for people who have major arthritis problems and the femur/pelvis joints don't work right any more.
I broke my hip when I was in college (actually, the sacrum, which connects the pelvis to the spine). It was a small fracture, so I just had to keep weight off of it for 6 weeks with a crutch.
I think it is pretty hard to be "also a surgeon". Might make more sense to have a surgeon who is also something else. I'd rather have a surgeon who dabbles in engineering or geology than an engineer who dabbles in surgery.
Actually, for simple things that you might do to healthy adults, it's not that far fetched. Think orthopedics, appendectomies and lacerations. They're pretty easy to teach. The problem with more complex stuff (like the hip fracture) is that you need lots of pieces parts. Special drills, special screws and plates, etc. For bad vascular accidents like a major blunt force trauma you'd need various bits of mesh, artificial blood vessels and such. Yeah, you can envision printing them out on some wizzo 3D printer, but we're not there quite yet.
It's not the instructions that are hard in surgery. You can download detailed anatomical guides on the Internet - it's the manipulative skill of not pulling the blood vessel apart when you're trying to sew it, the graphical skill of visualizing the organ in question after it's been run over by a truck and is bleeding, the clinical skill of how to structure the repair (what goes in first, what not to tug on) and then there is nursing, respiratory therapy, pharmacy, lab and a bunch of other little neglected bits.
Sounds like playing doctor to me.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Hey why not actually RTFA?
The whole point of CAMDASS is to eliminate communication delays by making the entire unit autonomous, with all the data necessary for surgery already on board.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
At that point all they have to do is wave an all-knowing tricorder over the wounded and occasionally inject you with the appropriate magic hypospray, so qualifications don't much seem to matter.
Sounds like an episode of star trek where the alien woman was not smart, but when she put on the magical helmet, the machine gave her fantastic amounts of knowledge into her brain for a short period of time. Of course, it almost killed bones when he tried to put spocks brain back in his body. The bloody alien tech is just never compatible with us humans.
Luckily he wasn't reading Iain Banks because then we'd all die. Ohh wait, we still will... nvm.
-- no sig today