Flying Blind in Space Long-Term?

In a September 2nd article on the website MedLine Plus, a site run by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, being in space for extended periods of time can affect your eyesight.

"The new study, of more than 300 astronauts in the U.S. space program, found that almost 50 percent of those who served on long missions -- six months or more -- reported experiencing new problems with their ability to see objects near to them while in space and for some time after returning to Earth. Roughly 23 percent of astronauts who spent shorter periods in orbit reported problems with their near vision during their missions and after getting home."

Yikes!  I hope we can find a solution for this.  Otherwise, we will not be able to see what we discover when we go venturing away from the planet.

Studying this and other space health issues should be something we are doing on the International Space Station.  After all, we don't even know what the health effects are for someone staying in space for as short as two years.  Hey, NASA, let's put some money into this please.

To view the entire Medline Plus article, click here.

Dangerous Shuttle and ISS Events

Since the last space shuttle mission lifted off this morning, I thought I would share a link to a Scientific American article and slide show entitled:

The 10 Most Dangerous Moments in Space Shuttle and Station History

Most of them I remember, but a couple of them snuck in under my radar.  Let's just hope NASA and the commercial companies springing up these days learn from these problems.

Enjoy and have a great day!

China's manned spaceflight program

So China's kicked off plans for an unmanned lunar landing in 2013.... a manned space station by 2020... and who knows what else. While I applaud whomever has the determination to explore space to "boldly go", it's still sobering that the US will no longer hold the cards for the first "flags and footsteps." Does this bother anyone else on some level? What else are you hearing out there regarding China's growing space capabilities?

So now that the International Space Station is near completion, here come the platitudes about its value as a research platform being fully realized, etc. Indeed, platitudes abound (particularly promulgated by NASA over the years) regarding the value of space research conducted on the space shuttle as well as the ISS. Some have questioned the "real" return on investment of such research (the IOM report which cited the waste of time that protein crystallization experiments have been is one that immediately comes to mind.)

One oft-cited "factoid" about space research concerns the value of biomedical investigation... and how knowledge of the physiological effects of spaceflight can lead to effective "countermeasures" to mitigate such effects. Nevertheless, has any of this research really led to breakthroughs in true countermeasures? What has the NSBRI been doing all these years? As one colleague has put it, the only effective countermeasure to the physiologic effects of spaceflight is.... a Gravity Prescription. Indeed, man has evolved in a 1G environment... and if taken out of that environment, logic would dictate that replacing that G force is the obvious answer to the deleterious physiologic effects which occur in microgravity.

The problem is.... what IS the Gravity Prescription and how to we "make" it? I'd love to hear some of your ideas and speculations (or frank disagreements with my opinions regarding the "real" value of space research.)