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posted by martyb on Thursday October 27 2016, @09:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-stay-horizontal-and-wear-tight-spandex dept.

New research brings more bad news to astronauts thinking about long-haul space flights as spinal muscles shrink after months in space, scientists have found.

Floating around in space in an environment with little or no gravity is not good for the human body. Along with decreased bone density, nausea, a puffy face, possible cognitive deterioration, an astronaut's back starts to weaken too.

The research is part of NASA's wider project to study the physical effects space has on the body to prepare for long-haul flights to Mars.

Results from the NASA-funded research have been published in Spine, and show spinal damage persists months after the astronauts return to Earth.

Six NASA crew members were subjected to MRI scans before and after spending four to seven months floating around the microgravity conditions of the International Space Station.

NASA should send the astronauts into space with one of those inversion tables so they can hang upside down.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday October 28 2016, @01:20AM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday October 28 2016, @01:20AM (#419678)

    There are the small issues of significantly accelerating the whole structure towards its destination, and negatively accelerating it when you get there, which interfere with building laterally. Solvable, but expensive.
    There is also the issue of a submerged submarine being exposed to temperatures varying from about 0C to at most 30C, which makes the mechanical engineering of moving parts a lot more trivial than space temperature variations.

    If engineers with a big budget haven't yet done something that seems obvious to you, it's highly likely that you don't know all the consequences as well as they do.

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