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Five Key Findings From 15 Years of the International Space Station

posted by cmn32480 on Friday January 01 2016, @01:14AM   
from the is-dark-matter-like-dark-energon dept.

martyb writes:

The Conversation has a story about five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station:

1. The fragility of the human body — there is considerable loss of strength and bone mass without intervention. Mitigating this is key to making it possible to have manned trips to mars.

2. Interplanetary contamination — spores of Bacillus subtilis were exposed to space upon the ISS (but shielded from solar UV radiation). "The space vacuum and temperature extremes alone were not enough to kill them off."

3. Growing crystals for medicine — "Crystals in a microgravity environment may be grown to much larger sizes than on Earth, enabling easier analysis of their micro-structure. Protein crystals grown on the ISS are being used in the development of new drugs for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and cancer."

4. Cosmic rays and dark matter — early results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) support the theory that a halo of dark matter surrounds the Milky Way.

5. Efficient combustion — flames burn more efficiently in space with much less soot produced. Understanding this may lead to more efficient combustion in vehicles.

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Original Submission

• Re:Protein Crystals and Dark Matter (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 01 2016, @04:08PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 01 2016, @04:08PM (#283402)

  The crystals grown in space is one of the biggest disingenuous arguments to come out of NASA ever. It has been known for DECADES [spaceref.com] that this is all bullshit, and it is very sad to see that it still lives and thrives:

  The International Space Station is an orbiting laboratory for the study of a microgravity environment. There are two quite separate justifications for a microgravity laboratory: One is to examine the biomedical effects of extended human exposure to microgravity; the other is to determine whether microgravity offers any advantage in manufacturing. There had been speculation that certain manufacturing processes that are difficult or impossible on Earth might be easier in microgravity. For most manufacturing processes, however, gravity is simply not an important variable. Gravitational forces are generally far too weak compared to interatomic forces to have much effect.

  A possible exception was thought to be the growth of molecular crystals, specifically protein crystals. The structure of protein molecules is of enormous importance in modern medical research. Protein crystals make it possible to employ standard X-ray crystallographic techniques to unravel the structure of the protein molecule. It had been speculated that better protein crystals might be grown in zero gravity. Unlike the interatomic forces within a molecule, molecules are bound to each other by relatively weak forces; the sort of forces that hold water droplets on your windshield. Gravity, it was supposed, might therefore be important in the growth of protein crystals.

  Indeed, in the days following the Columbia tragedy, NASA repeatedly cited protein crystal growth as an example of important microgravity research being conducted on the shuttle. NASA knew better. It was 20 years ago that a protein crystal was first grown on Space Lab 1. NASA boasted that the lysozyme crystal was 1,000 times as large as one grown in the same apparatus on Earth. However, the apparatus was not designed to operate in Earth gravity. The space-grown crystal was, in fact, no larger than lysozyme crystals grown by standard techniques on Earth.

  But the myth was born. In 1992, a team of Americans that had done protein crystal studies on Mir, commented in Nature (26 Nov 92) that microgravity had led to no significant breakthrough in protein crystal growth. Every protein that crystalizes in space also crystallizes right here on Earth. Nevertheless, in 1997, Larry DeLucas, a University of Alabama at Birmingham chemist and a former astronaut, testified before the Space Subcommittee of the House that a protein structure, determined from a crystal grown on the Shuttle, was essential to development of a new flu medication that was in clinical trials. It simply was not true. Two years later Science magazine (25 June 99) revealed that the crystal had been grown not in space but in Australia. Meanwhile, the American Society for Cell Biology, which includes the biologists most involved in protein crystallography, called in 1998 for the cancellation of the space-based program, stating that:

    "No serious contributions to knowledge of protein structure or to drug discovery or design have yet been made in space." ASCB, July 9, 1998
  Hoping to regain some credibility, an embarrassed NASA turned to the National Academy of Sciences to review biotechnology plans for the Space Station. On March 1, 2000, the National Research Council, the research arm of the Academy, released their study. It concluded that:

    "The enormous investment in protein crystal growth on the Shuttle and Mir has not led to a single unique scientific result." NRC, 1 March 2000
  It might be supposed that at this point programs in space-grown protein crystals would be terminated. It was a shock to open the press kit for STS-107 following the Columbia accident, and discover that the final flight of Columbia carried a commercial protein crystal growth experiment for the Center for Biophysical Science and Engineering, University of Alabama at Birmingham. The Director of the Center is Lawrence J. DeLucas, O.D., Ph.D. If I go to the NASA web site and look for research planned for the ISS, I once again find protein crystal growth under the direction of the Center for Biophysical Science and Engineering and Dr. Lawrence J. DeLucas.

  Micro-gravity is of micro-importance

  Parent