In Germany, there will be
bed rest experiments to simulate the effect of weightlessness on health. Sure, these have been done before, but the details make me feel queasy just thinking about it:
In the first major study to be carried out in Envihab, the challenge
will be to lie in bed for 60 days in a row to study the effects of long
duration spaceflight. The experiment starts this summer and the medical
team is currently in the process of selecting 12 participants....
“To cheat gravity, we tilt the subjects head-down by six degrees,”
says Limper. “This is very important, so that the head is below the rest
of the body.”
Stuck at this peculiar angle, the volunteers will
also be expected to eat a nutritionally controlled diet and go to the
toilet using bedpans and urine bottles. They will be monitored 24 hours a
day on close-circuit TV and even be transferred to special water-proof
tilted beds to take a shower.
Then, for more fun, they'll be put in a centrifuge:
Future studies will also employ a device located at the heart of
Envihab: a human centrifuge. Contained within a large white (windowless)
cylinder, it consists of four arms, around three metres long, arranged
in a cross about a central axis. One of the arms is fitted with a bed,
so doctors can spin volunteers to simulate varying accelerations.
It
is deliberately smaller than most human centrifuges. “We think this is
more or less the size we could implement on a space station,” says
Limper.
I hope the participants are paid well...
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