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The Washington Post has a story about a mysterious condition leading to the rapid deterioration of the eyesight of astronauts, highlighting the case of former NASA astronaut John Philips.
During Phillips' post-flight physical, NASA found that his vision had gone from 20/20 to 20/100 in six months
Rigorous testing followed. Phillips got MRIs, retinal scans, neurological tests and a spinal tap. The tests showed that not only had his vision changed, but his eyes had changed as well.
The backs of his eyes had gotten flatter, pushing his retinas forward. He had choroidal folds, which are like stretch marks. His optic nerves were inflamed.
Phillips case became the first widely recognized one of a mysterious syndrome that affects 80 percent of astronauts on long-duration missions in space. The syndrome could interfere with plans for future crewed space missions, including any trips to Mars.
Originally seen on HackerNews.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2016, @03:45AM
NASA et all are too busy wasting time and resources on bullshit stuff like one-off trips to the Moon and Mars to do real important science- like actually doing actual tests to see what would happen if humans and other animals live in Moon or Mars gravity long term and add more points to the "how much gravity" chart - right now we just have zero and Earth, we have nothing in between.
There was supposed to be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module [wikipedia.org]
But they cancelled it! One of the most important experiments that only a space station could do to see if we can be a space-faring species and they cancelled it.
In my opinion the most useful experiment the ISS has done so far is space tourism and NASA was against it. Most of the experiments are quite useless when it comes to making significant progress down the "humans in space" path ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/experiments_by_name.html [nasa.gov] ), or quite useless in themselves.
Worse: every few years they like to do the same old experiment of putting people in isolated chambers: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/11832279/Nasa-Mars-isolation-experiment-starting-in-Hawaii.html [telegraph.co.uk]
It's not the first or even second one. They've been doing such stuff so many times. Why? Because some administrators want a taxpayer funded holiday in Hawaii?
If they really wanted to know stuff on that issue, they could actually ask the US Navy on how they select, train and handle nuclear submariners and maybe even interview some ex-submariners.
They're not wasting as much money as the US military, but they're still mostly wasting it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday July 11 2016, @06:23PM
> the same old experiment of putting people in isolated chambers
Which is useless as long as they are volunteers and there's a door, even locked. It's not a real sim, because if it goes really bad, you will get out.
We should study women held captive in basements for a decade instead. Or Gitmo guys after they've been cleared, when they still don't know which year they'll be released. That's a closer mental status to a Mars trip than playing doll house in a shiny bubble.