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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.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday October 28 2016, @05:10AM
It's not really gravity though on a large enough scale it is pretty hard to tell the difference. The problem is that it won't be on that large of a scale. It has to be large enough that your head and feet (when standing) are moving about the same speed, otherwise you'll sense the difference, which leads to motion sickness and your body may just not respond correctly. As a worst case imagine a 12 foot spinning sphere. Your head would be in zero gravity and your feet at 1g.
Not sure how large it should be and it is shame that they aren't taking advantage of the space station to do some experiments. Also be nice to know how little gravity it takes to stay relatively healthy.
Walking even could be weird, especially when turning at a right angle. Drop something and it'll fall in an arc.
One thought is to have 2 capsules tethered together (actually even better, tethered to the main rocket so the tethers would be half as long) and spin them. The longer the tether, the better, as long as the tether is strong enough.
Other advantages could be having a spare spacecraft with you. One occupied and one full of supplies or both occupied, but only by half the possible crew. Things would have to kept in balance as well, easier with a central structure as one of the tethers could be shortened/lengthened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @07:27AM
If I recall, the last discussion on the subject came to the conclusion that the size necessary was somewhere between half a mile and a mile.
Easy[1] solution: Launch three aircraft carriers, weld them together end to end, and set the whole thing in motion. Then only use the tiny portions at the ends, rather than the entire length of the resulting structure.
[1] Calibrate sarcasm detector here.