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February 27 2012
Investigating the “Charlie Brown Effect”: Astronauts’ Chubby Faces and Hot-Sauce Cravings
One of these pockets must have Tabasco.
Does this zero gravity make me look fat? Yup. It’s called the Charlie Brown effect, according to Michele Perchonok, NASA’s shuttle food system manager, and it’s not because she’s fattening them up with shrimp cocktail and chicken consommé. Without the benefit of gravity, bodily fluids accumulate in the head, giving the astronauts rounder, cartoon-like faces.
As anyone who’s had a cold knows, more fluid in our facial cavities also means congestion and weakening our sense of smell. But is lack of gravity actually responsible to for all this? There’s only one way to find out: “Perchonok has asked [food engineer Jean Hunter] and her crew at Cornell to test the stuffy nose theory. To do that on Earth, volunteers will spend several weeks in a bed where their heads are lower than their feet to try to re-create that Charlie Brown effect.” This might not be what people had in mind when they volunteered for astronaut simulations.
Perchonok and Hunter got interested in the stuffy nose theory because they noticed that hot sauce was a surprisingly popular astronaut request. People who lose their sense of smell start preferring spicy ...
February 11 2011
To Hitch a Ride to Mars, Just Flag Down an Asteroid
Mars missions should probably come with the kind of warning label you’d find on a cigarette pack: “May cause cancer and blindness.”
If you were traveling to Mars solely by spacecraft, your health might take a serious hit during the 18-month or so round-trip journey–and you might not even be able to see your home by the time you got back. Throughout the journey high-energy particles known as cosmic rays would course through your body, not only damaging your eyesight, but also increasing your risk of cancer by up to 20 percent.
Luckily, one scientist has an answer: Don’t fly a spaceship to Mars, hop on an asteroid instead.
Cosmic rays zing into our solar system from interstellar space; here on Earth our planet’s magnetic field protects us from them, and astronauts aboard the International Space Station are mostly protected by the Earth’s bulk and its magnetic field as well. But astronauts on a long-haul trip to Mars would be in more danger.
As it stands, our current radiation shields are too cumbersome for spacecraft, and light-weight aluminum shields can exacerbate the problem: Cosmic rays can reflect off the metal and create secondary radiation. ...
January 21 2011
Fake Mars Astronauts Are Approaching Fake Mars!
With less than 10,000 miles to go until they reach fake Mars, the fake mission to the Red Planet is going as planned. Which is to say, the space travel simulation project known as Mars-500 project is full of mishaps and surprises, as the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems tests the fake astronauts’ ability to handle anything outer space could throw at them.
The next milestone: the fake arrival in Mars orbit on February 1.
And for being confined to a 1,800-square-foot test module for 520 lonely days, the crew members are doing a stellar job. In their last update, published on the official Mars-500 website on January 14, they give a terse but positive appraisal of their condition:
226th day of the experiment. Scientific equipment is in operable condition. Clarification for implementation of special experiments is carried out. There are no alterations of health state which can interfere with participating in the experiment and realizing of scientific program.
The list of experiments is long, and they’re all meant to test the many difficulties involved in actually traveling to Mars, from astronauts’ overall health ...
January 13 2011
Houston, We May Have Some Problems: Colonizing Mars and Sex in Space
Strap on your astronaut suit and hold on to your space shoes, because in 20 years, you could just be aboard Earth’s first mission to Mars. At least, that’s the hope of over 400 people who read the Journal of Cosmology’s special edition issue, The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet, and volunteered to take part in a not-yet-scheduled trip to Mars.
The journal spills the details about the logistics involved in a privately-funded journey to the Red Planet–a book-length brainstorm by leading scientists. What, for example, happens if you get an infection on Mars? How do you have sex in space? And, most importantly, how long do you have to live on Mars before you get to call yourself a Martian? (Ok, I made that last question up, but aren’t you curious?)
Any journey to Mars–especially one with no scheduled return to Earth–is fraught with challenges. As Fox News reports:
“It’s going to be a very long period of isolation and confinement,” said Albert Harrison, who has studied astronaut psychology since the 1970s as a professor of psychology at UC Davis…. “After the excitement of blast-off, and after the initial landing on Mars, it ...
October 14 2010
What’s That Flavor? I Can’t Taste It Over All This Noise
White noise doesn’t just drown out other noises, it drowns out taste too, says research in the appropriately named Journal of Food Quality and Preference. This could help explain why airplane food tastes so bland, why we eat more with the TV on, and why space tourists need such strong beer, the study’s first author told BBC News:
“There’s a general opinion that aeroplane foods aren’t fantastic,” said Andy Woods, a researcher from Unilever’s laboratories and the University of Manchester. “I’m sure airlines do their best – and given that, we wondered if there are other reasons why the food would not be so good. One thought was perhaps the background noise has some impact.”
To test this theory Woods had a group of taste testers eat a variety of foods with head phones on and piped in either white noise or no sounds. The white noise not only made the food less tasty, it also increased the perceived crunch of the food. The noise could be drawing attention away from savoring the food, Wood said to BBC News:
“The evidence points to this effect being down to where your attention lies — if the background noise is loud it might draw your attention to that, away from the food,” Dr Woods said.
While the experiment is interesting, it doesn’t completely explain why astronauts seem to loose their sense of taste while they’re in orbit. This phenomenon could be related to the noisiness of the space station, with averages of around 75 decibels in the work station, but it could also be a mysterious side effect of weightlessness.
The group is hoping to expand the understanding of how sound influences food experiences. Any breakthroughs they come up with could even be used to improve eating enjoyment, Woods told The Telegraph:
“In addition, just as enjoyable music can enhance the eating experience, if you dislike the background noise it can reduce your liking of that food. Based on these findings, a salad bar chain wanting to serve crunchy salads may find that they benefit from louder music, whereas a restaurant that serves salty food could consider turning the background music down to reduce the need for additional sodium in their food.”
If only they could find a sound that makes kids enjoy eating their vegetables.
Related content:
DISCOVER: Like Chips in the Night
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: But do vegetarians taste better?
Discoblog: Nano Snacks! Researchers Say Edible Nanostructures Taste Like Saltines
Discoblog: Space Tourists Will Get Their Own Special Space Beer
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Fruit flies have a taste for fizzy drinks
Image: Flickr/alistelis
September 14 2010
Astronauts’ Occupational Hazard: Falling-Off Fingernails
Along with the rest of the criteria that make for a good astronaut–some heavy degrees in science or technology, a tolerance for cramped spaces and freeze-dried food–let’s add another one. The ideal astronaut should have narrow hands to prevent his or her fingernails from falling off.
National Geographic reports that the design of astronauts’ space suit gloves can lead to hand and finger injuries, including an icky condition called fingernail delamination in which the nail completely detaches from the nailbed. While missing nails do grow back in time, if the nail falls off in the middle of a spacewalk it can snag inside the glove, and moisture inside the glove can lead to bacterial or fungal infections in the exposed nailbed. MIT astronautics professor Dava Newman told National Geographic that astronauts take this medical prospect seriously:
For now, the only solutions are to apply protective dressings, keep nails trimmed short—or do some extreme preventative maintenance. “I have heard of a couple people who’ve removed their fingernails in advance of an EVA,” Newman said.
The problem begins when the astronaut’s space suit is pressurized for a spacewalk (more technically called an extravehicular activity, or EVA), which makes the flexible fabric of the gloves hard and stiff. Newman decided to determine how these rigid gloves could make fingernails fall off, and found to her surprise that fingernail delamination was not linked to the length of astronauts’ fingers, which would cause more contact between the nails and the glove. Instead, astronauts with wide hands reported losing the most nails on the job. Her study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine, focused on measurements of the metacarpophalangeal joint, where the fingers meet the palm.
Peter Homer, who runs the commercial space suit design company Flagsuit LLC and who has studied astronaut gloves in great detail, told National Geographic that Newman’s findings make sense.
“The bigger the hand is, the more the glove squeezes on [the metacarpophalangeal] joint and cuts off blood flow.” Circulation getting repeatedly shut off then restored at the knuckle joint would damage the tissue underneath the fingernail, leading to delamination. It could also explain why so many astronauts have reported that their fingertips get cold during EVAs despite their thermal gloves, Homer said.
Related Content:
Discoblog: For the Aging, Four-Eyed Astronaut: Fancy Space Bifocals
Discoblog: Buzz Aldrin Explains: How to Take a Whiz on the Moon
Discoblog: Crushed-Out Man Stole Sally Ride’s Flight Suit
Discoblog: Scientists Examine Underwear Astronaut Wore for a Month
Image: NASA
August 17 2010
For the Aging, Four-Eyed Astronaut: Fancy Space Bifocals
One of the requirements for flying in a spaceship used to be near-perfect vision. When NASA relaxed its vision standards (to 20/200 or better uncorrected, correctable to 20/20 each eye for a mission specialist) they in turn created a new requirement–for near-perfect astronaut eyeglasses.
TruFocals (made by Zoom Focus Eyewear, LLC) might improve current astronaut spectacles by allowing space-travelers to focus mid-float on both near and far objects, whether they’re dealing with experiments or cooling loop warning indicators. As Scientific American reports, the glasses are currently undergoing NASA evaluation for space readiness–tests that include burning. The lenses will correct the condition known as presbyopia, in which aging people’s eyes lose focusing ability, making it difficult to see near objects. That’s the condition that causes people with good eyes to pick up reading glasses, and those with glasses to turn to bifocals.
These space glasses aren’t much like your grandma’s bifocals. TruFocals have two lenses for each eye: the outer lens uses the person’s usual prescription and the inner lens (closer to the the eye) is flexible and controllable by a slider on the eyeglasses’ bridge. With a little slide the shape of the inner lens changes, allowing the wearer to adjust their focus. That could be handy in an environment like the International Space Station, where floating astronauts may be trying to focus on things from odd angles.
The round shape is a necessity for the glasses to work best, Stephen Kurtin the glasses’ inventor told Scientific American, not a fashion decision:
“Some people say they’re cool, and some say they’re butt ugly.”
NASA may approve the glasses in time for the next space mission, though, as shown in the target-practice video below, the lenses are already available for planet dwelling four-eyes.
Related content:
Discoblog: E-focals: Electric Eyeglasses Are the New Bifocals
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Discoblog: Contacts Claim to Fix Your Vision While You Sleep
Discoblog: Will the Laptops of the Future Be a Pair of Eye Glasses?
Discoblog: Possible Cure For Blindness: Implanting a Telescope in Your Eye
Image: ZOOM FOCUS EYEWEAR LLC
June 11 2010
Crushed-Out Man Stole Sally Ride’s Flight Suit
Walking by a replica of Sally Ride’s flight suit during visits to NASA and Space Center Houston, Calvin Dale Smith would snicker. Later, he told his wife that he knew the location of Ride’s original flight suit. He didn’t tell her that it was in their home, in a duct tape-wrapped suitcase.
As Wired reports, Smith allegedly got his hands on Ride’s flight suit while working as a contractor at Boeing’s Flight Group Processing Office, which maintains the suits. During his time there, he also stole a NASA Omega watch and several machined spaceship parts (including a safety tether and airlock parts).
According to court documents (pdf), Smith’s wife turned in her husband, who had previously served jail time for domestic violence, after being asked to send her estranged husband his belongings. He wanted a suitcase, “the suitcase.”
Though the first American woman in space’s blue jumpsuit is estimated to fetch $2,500 if sold to the public and $3,500 at an open auction, Smith apparently, according to a local KHOU TV news report, wanted the suit because of a “crush” on the astronaut. A rejection letter found with the suit also shows an unsuccessful attempt to sell it to the Smithsonian.
According to Wired, Smith pleaded not guilty on May 27. He has a July 12 court date and, if convicted, could serve 10 years in jail. Closing KHOU TV’s report: “If convicted, Smith’s obsession with Sally is taking him on a Ride, to Federal Prison.”
Related content:
Science Not Fiction: Trend Watch: Scientists as Fashion Accessories
Bad Astronomy: Astronauts in the bag
Cosmic Variance: Women in Space — We. . . um . . . salute you
Image: NASA
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