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Space sleeping bag to solve astronauts' squashed eyeball disorder
Scientists have developed a hi-tech sleeping bag that could prevent the vision problems that some astronauts experience while living in space.
In zero-gravity, fluids float into the head and squash the eyeball over time. It's regarded as one of the riskiest medical problems affecting astronauts, with some experts concerned it could compromise missions to Mars. The sleeping bag sucks fluid out of the head and towards the feet, countering the pressure build-up.
[...] The sleeping bag, developed with outdoor equipment manufacturer REI, fits around the person's waist, enclosing their lower body within a solid frame.
A suction device, that works on the same principle as a vacuum cleaner, creates a pressure difference that draws fluid down towards the feet. This prevents it from building up in the brain and applying damaging pressure to the eyeball.
Several questions need to be answered before the sleeping bag technology is used routinely, including the optimal amount of time astronauts should spend in the sleeping bag each day.
Journal Reference:
Christopher M. Hearon, Katrin A. Dias, Gautam Babu, et al. Nightly Lower Body Negative Pressure and Choroid Engorgement in Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome, JAMA Ophthalmology (DOI: 10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2021.5200)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Friday December 10 2021, @12:23PM (9 children)
I hope the next generation of human-inhabited space stations includes spin. That would solve many, many problems with the current ISS, from medical problems down to using the toilet. Even a small fraction of a G would be enough to help. Experiments that need to be done in zero-G could either be done in the center, or in a separate, nearby facility.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 10 2021, @01:14PM (7 children)
Spin sounds great in theory. In practice, you're talking about increasing the cost of the vehicle/hab by 1 order of magnitude, maybe 2. Current designs just have to withstand launch, then float weightless for their service life. Throw even 0.2g into the mix and now they have to be structural against more than the interior-exterior pressure difference. Then we get into the question (which won't really be answered until we do it): how big does it have to be to avoid inducing extreme vertigo? Ever ride a Gravitron at a fair? I would not recommend lifting or in any way rotating your head while spinning - the gyroscopic effect comes into play in your middle ear, and in the Gravitron it can be extreme. In a low G habitat, the same effect will be there, and it will undoubtedly affect some percentage of people - and the smaller (less expensive to build/launch/operate) the hab is, the more people are going to get nausea. Then there's the whole fun of: how do you dock with it? Stop the spin if/when necessary? 100x increase in cost might be conservative.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10 2021, @03:06PM (5 children)
Astronauts are already highly selected, would adding another requirement even matter? I've never experienced vertigo due to height or motion, so I don't know how big a problem that is, but I can't imagine it would reduce the applicant pool too much, considering the restrictions already in place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10 2021, @04:16PM (2 children)
I think the goal would be being able to be less selective, i.e., be able to get more people into space.
Putting just the select few fighter jocks into space, we could keep the usual rigorous selection and skip all this extra spinniness.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 10 2021, @05:48PM (1 child)
The goal is to get more people into space. As long as there's no artificial gravity, nobody but professional astronauts and a handful of extreme enthusiasts will go, because microgravity sucks.
You can't sleep normally.
You can't eat normal food.
You can't take a shower normally.
You can't pee normally.
You have to follow a fighter jock exercise regimen.
You get heart disease despite the aforementioned exercise regimen.
It seems fun, and I'm sure it would be fun for an hour or two, but 24/7, no way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 11 2021, @12:16PM
That's what I said?
I'm confused because your reply seems formatted as a disagreement, but we have made the same points.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 11 2021, @05:25PM (1 child)
> would adding another requirement even matter?
We're in the realm of "unknown unknowns." How would it look if we put together a $100T space station and it turns out that the only way 99% of people can live on it for more than 72 hours without becoming debilitatingly nauseated is to surgically cut the nerves from their middle ear and give them a year of on-ground rehab/training so they can cope with that?
Will it happen? Probably not, but we don't really know until we try, and there's no way to simulate it - to get that kind of input into a homo-sapiens middle ear, you've got to build and launch the real deal, then try it.
Again, people would _probably_ adapt, most people who get zero G nausea get over it, or at least aren't completely debilitated, after a day, or two, or ten. The vomit comet is a small scale test for that, but a few seconds of zero-G followed by a few seconds of 2G is a very different thing than 72 hours of microgravity.
Sensitive people might sleep in frames that prevent their head from rotating (relative to the station) so they don't get "the spins" everytime they shift during their sleep, but then when they're up and around they'll have to deal with ear-canal slosh every time they rotate.
The effect will be less the larger the spinning frame is, and a minimal test vehicle might be a mini-hab on a cable vs a counterweight. We have the control systems to be able to spin up such a contraption, but it's not a cheap thing to build and operate no matter how "minimal" you make it. Exercise for the reader: what's the spin rate for a system with two mini habs on a cable, spun up to 0.1g at 100m diameter? If each hab weighs 1000kg, that's a cable capable of reliably holding 200kg load - in space, with multiple lives and billions of dollars of gear hanging on it. And, is 0.1g enough - or should we design for Mars gravity of 0.38g? Is 100m enough, or should we go for 500m?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 11 2021, @06:34PM
We have a lot of information on motion sickness. It's not unknown at all.
https://space.nss.org/media/Space-Settlement-Population-Rotation-Tolerance-Globus.pdf [nss.org]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41526-020-00112-w [nature.com]
https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2002ESASP.501..151H [harvard.edu]
A cable capable of supporting a ton! Whatever shall we do. The astronauts will have to stop by Harbor Freight on the way to the launch site. Not sure I'd trust it for a ten ton load, though. For that you'd better go to Grainger's.
Look into O'Neill cylinders. This is a well studied design for a rotating space habitat capable of 1G artificial gravity using only mid 20th century construction techniques. It's not what you have to build, but it's what can be built.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 11 2021, @09:42AM
Think a bit: Instead of spinning the bucket on its own axis, swing the bucket round and round using tethers and counterweights.
Stuff like what's the minimum G for "normal humans", how much time is needed in 1G to stay healthy, etc, all these are important questions that should be answered if humans are really interested in being a space-faring species. If humans aren't interested in being a space-faring species then we should stop wasting money, time and resources on space programs.
You dock at specific docking location(s) just like they already do - it's not like the ISS allows spacecraft to dock anywhere.
As for how to move stuff to and from the center - there are already many existing methods and technologies for moving stuff along cables.
If it results in a 100x increase in cost either the people involved are stupid, incompetent and/or corrupt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 11 2021, @09:57PM
You mean... this would justify doing the whole space sex research over again?