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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 28 2016, @06:04PM
An excellent point. Given that Mars gravity is ~0.4G (3.711 m/s2), probably something like 0.5 or 0.6G would be sufficient.
Citation please? Any actual scientific evidence or studies showing that 0.6G would be sufficient? And what would the definition of "sufficient" be? e.g. normal healthy individuals could live indefinitely in that g and also return to Earth G without too much problems and recover to full after a month?
The last I checked this was cancelled: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module [wikipedia.org]
So there's probably not much science being done in that area.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday October 28 2016, @06:32PM
Citation please?
I pretty much pulled it out of my ass, so go ahead and find a Goatse image and there's your citation.
Have a lovely day.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr