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Two Astronauts Return To Earth After Record 340 Days In ISS (technews.mobi)
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian astronaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Wednesday after spending a year aboard the ISS, conducting experiments for future missions to Mars. Mikhail Kornienko, 55, and Scott Kelly, 52, completed the longest uninterrupted period aboard the ISS since the station was deployed in 2000. Kelly, who has made four trips to the ISS, also breaks the record for cumulative time in space by an American, with 540 days. Kelly and Kornienko performed this mission to study the biological and psychological effects of long stays in space in order to prepare for future missions to Mars in 2030 or sooner. During their stay at the station, both were frequently subjected to medical examination and a battery of tests to study the long-term effects of micro-gravity on the human body.
At this point these space stunts are the equivalent of flagpole sitting.
What was not in TFS and IS important is that Scott's identical twin brother (a retired astronaut himself) remained on Earth all this time. So NASA is doing comparative studies between the two of them. This was no stunt but instead a carefully crafted experiment.
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most long-flight astronauts have some deficit. or maybe it's just a year older which does it.
Short term - loss of bone density, joint malfunction due to lack of use
Can they now even walk without being carried?
How many hours does someone have to exercise daily to make up for lost bone mass?
Long term, who knows...
Is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY
Boah!
I could also carefully craft the same experiment with a twin living in a submarine.
So you have an anti-gravity submarine just lying around somewhere that can be used for these experiments?
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Let's all give a big "THANK YOU" to Russia for giving us a ride! We apparently can't even do that for ourselves anymore even though we used to send people to the damn MOON regularly. So, yeah, thanks for doing our science and industry for us now so we can sill say we have astronauts.
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The same boring, tiresome "research" has been done already.
Umm??? If it was already done then why did they repeat it? I certainly haven't heard of identical twins being tested like this before. Or is there some sort of astronaut pork barrel funding conspiracy I am not aware of?
OK, now what? You're gonna do it again, and again, and again, pretexting "science" when you know very well that you have your bags packed for Mars.
My bags are packed for my 3 hour drive home tomorrow, not for Mars.
Stop being a disingenuous fool. Funny how medical research usually involves animal models, you could get all your precious free-fall science from a mouse model as well. For a lot cheaper.
Yeah medical science uses animal models. But only when it is impractical or impossible or unethical to use humans. And even then animal models are only an approximation to humans. Once the animal model has run its course medical researchers turn to testing humans. So I posit that you are the one being disingenuous in saying that this research could be done cheaper with animals - because eventually they would have to send up a human in order to collect actual human data. In effect they have saved money by skipping a lot of unnecessary animal model approximations.
Oh but then you can't hero-worship Steve Austin, Astronaut, like you had on your grade-school lunch box.
Sorry, Stevo was a bit after my time in grade school. Nice try with the attempted ad-hom, but you failed in your basic research as to who I am.
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Was the brother confined within a control space, so everything aside from microgravity and speed were the same?
Instead of being a pedantic douchenozzle why don't you go and read up on the NASA Twins Study itself and then come back here and report on everything that NASA did wrong?
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There is no daily flight to the station. It is either 340 days or say 500 days.
"U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian astronaut Mikhail Kornienko" should be "U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko".
btw this is not just me being pedantic.
Four cosmonauts have stayed for 365 days or longer continuously in space during the 1990's. The record for the longest space flight being held by Valeri Polyakov who stayed on the Mir space station from 1994 - 1995. Russian achievements are often obscured because of the uncomparable public involvment by NASA.
See: Ten Longest Space Flights
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