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Eye Problems From Space Affect At Least 21 NASA Astronauts
SternisheFan sends this report from Universe Today:
How does microgravity affect your health? One of the chief concerns of NASA astronauts these days is changes to eyesight. Some people come back from long-duration stays in space with what appears to be permanent changes, such as requiring glasses when previously they did not. And the numbers are interesting. A few months after NASA [said] 20% of astronauts may face this problem, a new study points out that 21 U.S. astronauts that have flown on the International Space Station for long flights (which tend to be five to six months) face visual problems. These include "hyperopic shift, scotoma and choroidal folds to cotton wool spots, optic nerve sheath distension, globe flattening and edema of the optic nerve," states the University of Houston, which is collaborating with NASA on a long-term study of astronauts while they're in orbit.
like they exhibit a spacey behavior or demeanor?
I know there are all kinds of chronic health problems that can emerge from extended stays in space - heart problems being the big one, since the heart doesn't like going from microgravity to Earth gravity abruptly. Yet, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot to be done about it unless we find a way to generate gravity in space. Has any research been done on mitigating the effects of space?
bone density plummets, muscles atrophy, eyes degenerate. Are we telling this to kids that go to space camp? Being an astronaut is as bad if not worse for your health as playing in the NFL. Of course, i find the former more interesting to follow from the comfort of my armchair.
Why should they be immune to what's happening to the rest of us?
Clearly, all the sci-fi books and movies from the 1960s showed that The Species (tm) *must* colonize the universe and get off this rock.
'nuff said.
And that is it. Space is off limits. For the health risks. Ignore the undeniable fact that keeping you on this planet makes you easier to control. That has nothing to do with the ban on travel to space. Continue slaving for your terrestrial lords and masters.
Not enough hot green alien ladies to make first contact with yet, I surmise is the root cause of this problem.
Obviously orbital habitats either need to be spun-up or contain living quarters located within centerfuges.
I'll just use this article as the explanation for the whole series.
PlanetVulkan.com
Is the policy regarding who gets to space. This eye issue is a problem that clearly most astronauts avoided to discuss with the doctors in fear of being banned from future flights in space. The policy should either ignore any medical issues that came up during their stay in space or prevent any astronaut from going back up there a second time, in order to have more honesty from their side regarding their health and various issues that might have risen while in space.
Astronauts have been testing each others' eyes in space for a long time. They say that they can literally feel the pressure and changes to their eyes. The biggest problem is that a long manned spaceflight, say to Mars, will almost certainly cause any pilot to become completely functionally blind by the time the return voyage is on the table. If not completely blind before they even reach the orbit of Mars.
What are the options? In flight laser eye surgery? Surgical implants? Special glasses?
Better artificial gravity? Robotic missions? Suicide missions?
We've long known what will likely avoid these sorts of problems - create a rotating environment to simulate gravity.
While the physics principle is simple, engineering a safe rotating station is probably quite challenging.
The sort of thing NASA was created to investigate...
But surely the goggles do something.
I knew that I could write off this article (or just Slashdead altogether) when I read the first sentence.
How does microgravity affect your health?
It isn't MY health that is being affected, and more importantly, there are MANY factors besides the relative lack of gravity which may have an impact upon one's health.
captcha: idiots
In order to travel into the heavens as the various ancient mystics told us?
This is an unintuitive wild speculation, but I wonder if these effects are a linear function of the gravity or if there is a more complex interaction.
In other words, if Alice spent 6 monts in zero-G and Bob spent 6 months in 0.166-G, and assuming equal eye health, would Bob have less damage than Alice or more?
Obviously the human body emerged out of a 1-G environment, so the eye has evolved with those pressures. But just because removing those pressures completely may result in harm, that is not to say that removing those pressures partially would be harmful.
The only non-zero-G astronauts I know of were the Apollo folks - but I can't find any information (or anectdotes from them) on the difference in physiological effects of zero-g versus 1/6th-G.
It seems like they would have experienced less intercranial pressure and would have had an actual reference for up and down.
Oh space be a harsh mistress.
Oh he's not a doctor. But he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Obviously orbital habitats either need to be...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Pursued by the strivers and the authoritarians.
Eye Problems From Space Affect At Least 21 NASA Astronauts
Oh noes! All of the future Space Pirates are now in serious trouble!
Captain: Arrr, ye matys! Let's board that tiny hauler thair before they knows what hit them. Ther'll be treasure enough for us all!
Crewmember 1: Arrr, ey, capt'in!
(Captain runs to the gangway in order to board the other ship.) "Open port -- board and attaaaack!"
Crewmember 2: Ey ey, capt'in!
Crewmember 1: But Capt'in! Ey -- my ey! I can't see the controls to dock us! (Door slides open. Entire problem shortly solved.)
Thus, Global Warming continues unabated. The world is doomed. News at 11.
And now, a word from our sponsor: LensCrafters is now selling asbestos-tinted glasses with cutlass frames. Hurry before supplies run out!
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
My wearing glasses is proof I was abducted by aliens, right?
That's it. I'm definitely not going into space.
NASA, please take my name off the list. I've changed my mind.
You are welcome on my lawn.
without surgery!
It's a great first step for NASA, now if they can further admit that those astronauts have also come back with weird shifts in rectal geometry, we can begin to face, as a species, the deeper space facts of life.
We should stop spending all this time and money trying to outsmart gravity. It's not going to happen. If we want to go to mars and beyond with any regularity we must do so in a gravity environment. We know how to do this already. We've wasted so much money on this already.
and yet the apollo missons this was never a problem.....
A cost of $30 million per person to LEO via Soyuz, or ~$65 million if Russia over charges, is a pretty strong reason to maximize stay length in LEO.
Astronauts tend to be proud of their eyesight... like Chuck Yeager:
http://www.achievement.org/aut...
From the early days of test pilots and the original Right Stuff astronauts they've typically had much better than 20/20 eyesight. :^O
So it's probably easy to detect this sort of thing, and they might be a little ticked off to loose it
Of course a lot of people would go to space even if they went blind... most of us risked that in Junior High School anyway!
Imagine a world where we've got people living their whole lives, or something close to it, in space. Over time the people who are least affected by these kinds of problems would presumably have an evolutionary advantage. Long term, a whole new race of humans adapted to life in space develops.
This article makes me wonder if all those little gray aliens are actually blind despite having those big back eyes. That, or have they invented Gravity Plating?
seriously, making a spinning station can't be _that_ hard.
Better launch systems and faster engines might help. The less time in microgravity, the less damage.(?) That fact we use chemical rockets to get into space and maneuver seems kind of antique.
Surely the cosmonaut programs also experienced similar issues. Were they not reported for propaganda means? Pretty bad science if so.
Or were the cosmonauts not affected as strongly or so many individuals affected?
someone needs to make some phone calls, when Putin settles down.
Some speculations... The US RDA for vitamin D is about 10X too low for adults, so likely all astronauts in the space station have been deficient, which could contribute to bone loss and some other health effects. Also, living in a liquid environment might help mitigate loss of muscle tone by creating muscle-strengthening resistance as astronauts swim in the liquid the same way dolphins stay fit floating essentially weightlessly in water. (Granted, it might not be identical to living in a G-field.) A resistant spacesuit might also provide some of this conditioning too -- however the liquid also doubles as a radiation shield, at the cost of more mass to lift into space. Breathable liquids have been researched, but I don't know where that work is now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Others have talked about rotating cylinders (like O'Neill space habitats). I'm all in favor of trying that. However, those seem harder to make and maintain and travel between that more modular zero-G Marshall-Savage-Millennial-Project-like-plastic-bubbles with two meter water shields at the exterior for radiation protection. So, it seems like ultimately genetic engineering, nanoengineering, or medicine to adapt humans to zero-G might ultimately be cheaper than rotating space habitats. Or, maybe, like Hans Moravec suggests, space will be the domain of our zero-G-optimized robot "mind children" (and perhaps human minds downloaded into some of them or teleoperating some of them).
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.