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Study Finds That Astronauts Are Severely Sleep Deprived
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the International Space Station and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five. In fact, getting a full night's rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say."
I'd want to soak up every minute of it. Maybe they should look into the mechanism called: "It's frickin awesome."
Apparently I sleep like an astronaut.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
They sleep in little padded pods. I'm pretty sure they can go pitch black.
That helps me sometimes.
Oh, and no coffee late in the evening.
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Earth to astronauts: Go to sleep
By Emily Underwood
7 August 2014 6:30 pm
It's hard to sleep in outer space. On the International Space Station (ISS), the sun rises every 90 minutes when the station circles Earth. Space suits can be uncomfortable, too: After landing on the moon in 1969, Buzz Aldrin reported getting only âoea couple of hours of mentally fitful drowsingâ due to the noise and the cold.
Now, a new study published online today in The Lancet Neurology shows the extent of sleep deprivation among astronauts. Researchers tracked the sleep patterns of 85 crew members aboard the ISS and space shuttle and found that despite an official flight schedule mandating 8.5 hours of sleep per night, they rarely got more than five.
In fact, getting a full night's rest was so difficult that three-quarters of shuttle mission crew members used sleep medication, and sometimes entire teams were sedated on the same night. Although, unlike astronauts from Aldrin's day, crew members now sleep in quiet, dark chambers, lack of gravity itself may contribute to the problem.
Given that sleep deprivation contributes to up to 80% of aviation accidents, it's important to better understand why sleep is so difficult in space, the authors say.
I used this: http://www.viewcached.com/http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/08/earth-astronauts-go-sleep
Yahoo is the only site that had it cached.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder how sleep apnea works in space. It's hard to sleep on your side when there's no "up".
Everyove knows how fast men fall asleep after they have taken care of themselves.
This is nothing new, and is surely not news; perhaps quantifying it and writing an article for a magazine bleeding subscribers is relevant, but this has been discussed since mankind breached the outer limits of the atmosphere.
Blindingly obvious link for anybody with a Freshman-Year level physics course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
I don't think there's ever been a proper study of astronauts' natural sleeping patterns in space. There are always more things people want astronauts to do than there are hours to do them in, so everything (including sleep) is very tightly scheduled. Nobody's ever said "spend the next week doing nothing but keeping your spaceship running, and do it on your own schedule".
We don't know what effect, if any, the freefall environment has on sleep patterns. It may be that astronauts are so sleep-deprived because Mission Control has been scheduling things wrong.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Oh, I hate blue LEDs. When they first came out I thought they were so awesome, then I mistakenly bought an alarmclock that had a blue display. Two layers of automotive window tint later and I still couldn't stand it, had to switch back to red. The blue one now lives out in the tool shed so that its radio can be used while doing yard work.
As to the astronauts' problems, I expect that between the hum of equipment, the extremely short orbital period the station has, the feeling of weightlessness from a sensory perspective, and the effects of weightlessness from a biological perspective probably all make it much harder to sleep. Until we get some kind of centripetal acceleration thing going and get a station up into something closer to geostationary orbit it's probably not going to get any better.
And yes, I am aware of how expensive it is to send mass up to geostationary as opposed to low earth orbit. That doesn't change the need to do that to get our space program out of danger of just falling out of the sky.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Their bodies are not challenged during the day
With the exception of the cosmic rays shooting through their eyes....
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
Do we have comparisons for their physical state before and after regarding how much sleep deprivation their bodies showed? Perhaps part of the reason that they had trouble sleeping is that it's less tiring to be awake in space or more restful to be asleep in space.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
that stuff is just too perky
Parent is probably referring to Cosmic ray visual phenomena
I agree that sensory deprivation must be the cause of sleeplessness for the astronauts. I for one have a hard time sleeping without any covers, no matter how hot the weather is, and I may be sweating, but I can't sleep without something pressing down on my skin, and even in the heat, a simple thin bedsheet, which is much colder, is not as good from the comfortable pressure feeling perspective, as a thicker sleeping bag material, except for the heat part, so I do use the thin sheets when I have to, but if in any way bearable, even if very hot, I go for the sleeping bag material. Modern camping sleeping bags from Walmart are nice in that you can wash and dry them very fast, and they take full strength dose of bleach in the washer, and do not degrade, unlike colored traditional linen or even white linen that yellow after prolonged numerous bleachings, plus they are too heavy, and not soft, fluffy enough. Old school goose feather packed fluffy beddings are very thick (and for that they may cause sweating in the summer but work in extreme winter without stove heat in single layer as opposed to Walmart sleeping bags needing to be doubled or tripled up to build the thickness), but harder to wash, bleach and dry.
In the weightlessness of space nothing presses against the body and skin to any degree. I could not sleep well like that. One way to solve it is to take a 55 gallon drum, or something bigger, and spin it, create microgravity like that, but the air friction becomes an issue, plus dizziness from uneven centrifugal forces as small radii, compared to a 300 meter radius spinning cylinder space station. Another way to create skin pressure is to use inflatable things, that look like sleeping bags, inflated to just the right pressure, not too tight, not too loose, just comfortable. I used to have inflatable air beds from walmart, and they were awesome comfortable down here in Earth's gravity, especially when they haven't been inflated for days or weeks, and slightly deflated, but without exception somebody comes into the house and pokes a hole into them when I'm not at home, or when I'm asleep, to where they end up totally deflated and it feels as if you are sleeping on the bare hard floor. So inflatable sleeping bags for now, maybe some kind of small radius slow spinning device that does not cause too much dizziness, and 300 meter radius rotating space stations with sleeping bags in the future, is the solution. That's my 2 cents, or more like 2.1 cents due to inflation.
I'd find it particularly difficult to sleep wearing a facehugger. Its probably almost as bad as when the cat decides to flop down on my head at night.
Have gnu, will travel.
Her experience is actually not at all uncommon. Many astronauts report being uncomfortable for extended periods because of the shift in fluids messing with the body. Nausea is not uncommon because the middle ear ends up filled with fluid and there's no "down" for the vestibular system to reference. People in extended missions find they suffer from discomfort of muscles and joints. They experience vision changes and bone loss. The human body is just not adapted to zero G. Some never adapt; but, astronauts being a group of over-achievers by definition, the hide the symptoms and don't report them.
This phenomenon also seems to occur in the darkness of caves as well.
I'd find it particularly difficult to sleep wearing a facehugger.
You must be doing it wrong. Per your wikia link:
" the Facehugger cuts off the blood supply to the victim's brain, knocking them out within seconds"
You really should sleep fine. :)
Most likely it happens all the time; it's just not noticeable under common conditions. As with so many other sensory phenomena, it gets drowned out by noise from other sources.
Granted, however, it's going to happen more often in orbit.
I agree that sensory deprivation must be the cause of sleeplessness for the astronauts.
I agree that it may be a contributory factor. I doubt very much it is a singular cause.
... I can't sleep without something pressing down on my skin, and even in the heat, a simple thin bedsheet, which is much colder, is not as good from the comfortable pressure feeling perspective
This cannot be the cause. Again it might contribute but this effect is not just possible but rather easy to simulate in microgravity. Not exactly, you understand, but closely enough that it should not be a problem. Imagine a blanket held against you gently by elastic or springs. Or... by pressure on the blanket from the outside via extremely soft foam. (By "easy" I did not mean cheap.)
Exposure to light (and in particular some frequencies at the blue end of the spectrum) fool the body into thinking it is experiencing daylight, and this actually affects the balance of certain hormones, like melatonin which is normally secreted shortly before and during sleep.
Studies have shown that experiencing bright light (and especially, as mentioned, of certain frequencies) straight up to bedtime, not only after bed, is known to interfere with melatonin production and other less significant hormones. In some animals, it can drive their hormones so crazy as to cause tumors and other serious health problems.
Humans are very flexible, and we can adapt to conditions of the tropics and (with protection) the poles, but it takes time to acclimate.
I suspect that if they subjected astronauts to the same kind of lighting conditions and hours for 60 days prior to their stay on ISS, a good part of this problem would go away. Expecting them to acclimate to the lighting conditions on top of everything else, and without a prior adjustment period, is asking a lot of them.
I had an unusual work schedule and began sleeping for no more than four hours at a time. The effects where bad.. My sister is a nurse and worked PM's and nights and we talked about the toll it took on us. When she told people that she worked nights their reply was "Oh. so you just sleep during the day". The lack of a normal day/night schedule is really bad. The flight crews train for this but you can't erase your body clock. If you haven't done it you will never know what it's like. Imagine having a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes.
They should look at this: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazi...
Too much crap in space research/science nowadays.
All the NASA scientists who are proposing one way trips to Mars should go on one way trips out of NASA. That'll improve NASA. One way trips to Mars are a waste of money, time and resources. NASA should just get with the real next step and build a space station with artificial gravity. Not talk about stupid one way trips to Mars.
Trying to go to Mars at this point of our "tech tree" is like trying to jump before being able to stand. Even if we succeed we will fall on our faces. And we won't learn that much for the effort expended.
There have been experiments in this area: one design for the sleeping bag had an inflatable ring around the bag's perimeter. When inflated, it pulled the sleeping bag taut to provide some pressure on the body.
In space no one can hear you snore.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That sounds a lot like the submarines I served on. It often seemed like I was the only one not popping Tylenol Cold or melatonin to sleep.
Maybe there are radioactive elements underground as well.
For me, the best the sleeps I had were in a hotel room which had air filtering, blackout curtains and was on the end of the top floor, well away from all the other guests banging and clattering their suitcases through the corridors.
But move to the same kind of room right next to the main hallway, and it was impossible to get a deep sleep, because there was always someone every hour who figured the best way to open a door that opened inwards was to hit it with a large suitcase. The same thing happens if the hotel room has emergency lights that come on whenever the main lights are switched off.
Air flow could be another problem. Even on Earth, sleeping under a lie-in (sloping part of a roof) always gives me a sore head due to the lack of air flow. The CO2 seems to build up. The only way I could stop that, was to sleep directly underneath the skylight window and keep it open. Maybe the shape of the sleeping pods leads to CO2 build up.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I have an access point in the bedroom with some obnoxiously bright blue LEDs. They're bright enough that you can almost read by the light it throws off. To make things even more obnoxious, the WiFi indicator blinks constantly once it's fully up and running.
Fortunately, all of that is fixed with a strip of electrician's tape. It doesn't even look too out-of-place. Tape wouldn't work too well for a clock (my Moto X is my alarm clock), but it'll tame blue LEDs in most other devices.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
You must be a woman.
Thanks for telling me about that.
I'm testing it out to see if I get newlines without inserting br html codes.
Here it goes,
let's see if it works:
Tadaa!!!
PS. Oh man, it did work in the preview, but now I'm gonna lose that edge of insanity that adds a special annoying touch to my posts, and people might end up thinking I'm just another sane person. Now I'll have to try extra hard to post blocks of text, without hitting the enter key. Oh wait, that's how I post anyway, when I started posting here in April after like a 4 year break, I tried at first hitting Enter and formatting my text, just to watch it all flow together, and I was too lazy to add the br br html newline characters, so I just started posting like this. Now I'm too used to it, and love how the anti-terrorist FBI/CIA newbies that have to read through all this get annoyed and pissed, and sometimes bitch about it. It's like special stress testing for them, so they get used to their job not being always rain and sunshine when it comes to etiquette and proper behavior, and they gotta learn how to get past these things and not sweat the small stuff, before they can graduate and move onto more important and truly dangerous crazy people who, unlike me, they actually believe in what they say, and mean it, and don't know the meaning of sarcasm. I'm still dangerous with the way I talk, abusing free speech, but I have good excuses too. Or not. Oh well, this is Slashdot, and nobody is forced to read it, unless they want to, or somebody pays them to do it, and then it's like if you don't really want to do it, you can always try to find a different occupation for yourself. There, I made a nice big block of text again, on purpose, without newlines in it.
I too pitched the Blue LED Alarm clock. And have the windows blacked out, but to your other point . . .
Yes, a spinning wheel for artificially created gravity solves one problem, but leaving LEO and the protection inside the Van Allen Belts for geostationary orbit . . . I fear you'd sleep better, but you'd be sleeping in a microwave, having given up lots of your radiation shielding.
Water shielding or "building inside an asteroid" . . . are both currently unfeasible for lift-weight or maneuverability.
So, its a win-lose situation for the moment.
No, I don't remember your name. But the memory mapped screen on a TRS80 from 1977 is from 15360 to 16383 if that helps.