Hearts Become Spherical When Astronauts Go To Space

With space exploration entering a new phase, researchers are discovering new complications. That astronauts loose bone/muscle mass and experience vision issues due to prolonged microgravity has been known for some time. Now we must add deformation of the heart to the list.

Hearts Become Spherical When Astronauts Go To Space
www.redorbit.com...

The new findings bolsters the evidence that even longer periods in space, as would occur on a mission to Mars, is associated with increased dangers on human health. The results of the astronaut study will help scientists better understand how a spaceflight lasting 18 months or longer could affect heart health.

“The heart doesn’t work as hard in space, which can cause a loss of muscle mass,” senior study author James Thomas, MD, Moore Chair of Cardiovascular Imaging and Lead Scientist for Ultrasound at NASA, said in a statement. “That can have serious consequences after the return to Earth, so we’re looking into whether there are measures that can be taken to prevent or counteract that loss.”

In order to keep the heart healthy in space, astronauts will need to know the amount and type of exercise they need to perform to guarantee their safety on prolonged spaceflights. Thomas noted that exercise regimens developed for astronauts could also help people on Earth who have physical limitations also maintain good heart health.

For the study, the researchers trained astronauts to take images of their hearts using ultrasound machines installed on the International Space Station. The 12 participating astronauts provided data on heart shape before, during and after space missions.

The results show that the heart becomes more spherical by a factor of 9.4 percent. This is on board with what scientists had predicted using mathematical models developed for the project. The team believe the models, developed specifically for the study, could also give doctors a better understanding of common cardiovascular conditions for ground-based patients.

This could be a serious set back for prolonged space flights, like those to Mars.

However, on the bright side, it may shed light on new methods for treating complications of the heart here on Earth.

-FBB

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


the human body isn't meant for space travel
it's a scuba suit for walking around on the planet
it'd be a bit like expecting a fish to live on land inside a flight simulator?
we're going to need an entirely different type of scuba suit to travel in space
probably something like we saw on the movie avatar, moving a mind into a suitable vessel

..i wonder what those geeks at area 51 are up to these days?
thanks for posting, i'll probably use this as a reference point for the gospel of tinfoil

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


True and not a huge surprise, we have been aware of the dangers of zero gravity for a while. I think radiation and high energy particles are the bigger threat.

This just adds to the argument for artificial (centrifugal) gravity on any long term flights. An engine design that can produce constant acceleration at 1G would do the trick too.

Astronauts experience many health problems in space, including loss of bone density, vision anomalies, hypotension, arrhythmia etc....like the poster above said, we are not meant to be in space...or we have to build better spaceships instead of trying to find short term solution to the astronauts problems.

So no artificial gravity for prolonged inner system traveling?

LittleByLittle
So no artificial gravity for prolonged inner system traveling?

edit on 4-4-2014 by LittleByLittle because: (no reason given)

You would need a huge ship, freaking huge to be specific.

Why Don't We Have Artificial Gravity?
www.popularmechanics.com...

Why haven't we built ourselves a centripetal space station yet? One problem is size. John Page, a lecturer on aerospace design for University of South Wales, told ABC Science that the scale of such a craft would pose some problems. "The smaller the spacecraft is, the faster it has to rotate," he says, "so if you're going to generate gravity, it's got to be done with a very large spacecraft that spins very slowly. The bigger the disk, the slower you can rotate it. Plus, says Francis, "it'll be disorienting if your ship has any windows in it." And what would an ISS mission be without Chris Hadfield sending back pictures of Earth?

Besides, a lack of windows wouldn't make dizziness a nonissue: If a spacecraft's rotating portion were too small, residents would feel a huge difference in the force imposed on their heads and what they felt on their feet. They'd end up dizzy and lightheaded because blood would be drawn down, away from the brain. "At this stage," Page said, "there's no spacecraft on the drawing board big enough to do this. It would have to very large—much larger than a football field." ISS, in comparison, is basically the size of a small apartment. Francis points out that at a viable scale, a rotating spacecraft becomes one heck of an added expense. "Making a really big spaceship is an expensive problem too," he says, "since every piece of it has to be boosted from Earth into orbit."

Large rotating ships would also further complicate space travel. Not just in terms of energy, but inertia would make it difficult to achieve the exacting adjustments a space craft would need to make to avoid total and complete disaster. The flight paths must be adjusted to achieve gravity slings and avoiding particles.

Not as easy as fictional movies make it seem.

I REALLY hate 97% of what is produced by hollywood.

Also, the new cosmos series sux so hard . . . I wouldn't use it as a means of gaining any sort of understanding concerning science. Seriously it is soooooooooooo bad. Oh wait, it has the same producer as family guy . . . I would say they are about the same.

-FBB

FriedBabelBroccoli

Large rotating ships would also further complicate space travel. Not just in terms of energy, but inertia would make it difficult to achieve the exacting adjustments a space craft would need to make to avoid total and complete disaster. The flight paths must be adjusted to achieve gravity slings and avoiding particles.

Not as easy as fictional movies make it seem.

Yes it won't be easy but it's not impossible. Here's an idea for an inflatable 40-foot diameter "Inner tube" design that would rotate at 10 rpm to produce half of Earth's gravity. This image shows a scale model as it would be tested on the ISS prior to using a full sized version for prolonged space flight in a spacecraft:

Launching a Space Station to Other Worlds

The trickiest piece of engineering is the inflatable spinning torus that would provide partial artificial gravity. The ring would need to spin at 10 RPM to provide a force one-half Earth gravity. The bearings, slip rings for power, liquid metal seals, and counter-rotating flywheel would be an engineering challenge. A scale working model of the centrifuge would be externally attached to the ISS for testing.

Here's what the final spaceship might look like:

realspaceships.tumblr.com...

The O'Neill cylinders look more impressive but we won't be building those anytime soon unless it's in the scenario in the documentary "Evacuate Earth", where it takes 75 years to build one.

Also, the new cosmos series sux so hard . . . I wouldn't use it as a means of gaining any sort of understanding concerning science. Seriously it is soooooooooooo bad. Oh wait, it has the same producer as family guy . . . I would say they are about the same.

Seth McFarlane doesn't pretend to be a scientist, but Tyson is one so I'm surprised the show is bad, but I haven't seen it yet. Tyson makes a good impression to me where he's appeared elsewhere so I thought the new Cosmos would be good.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Well the cosmos really irks me as it can not seem to focus on the science or scientists. It makes constant Biblical references which have absolutely no place or significance in regard to the subject matter. The intro is all about all seeing (cosmic eyes), sea shells in the light (Venus, Lucifer), and somehow managing to always represent helical DNA strands as double crosses (mystery school representations of the enlightened consciousness). They repeatedly call mathematical models prophecies while referring to religious persecution of non-scientists as 'religious persecution of "science".' In episode four they even make a blatant Biblical reference of astronomers 'prevailing against the gates of Heaven,' did I mention the astronomers are always saying, "Hell's bells?" I get incredibly annoyed when a so called "science" program spends so much time trying to take shots at an extremely small portion of the population who really do not have much influence.

All this while they are traveling around the cosmos in their MAGIC SPACESHIP . . . . f'ing pointless programming for retards who just want to look at pretty pictures and pretend they are actually learning anything.


/ON TOPIC
I agree that there are promising models, but more research is needed to figure out exactly how much artificial gravity would be needed to prevent such physiological complications during long periods of space travel. This also brings into question whether or not Mars would have enough gravity to keep the human heart operating well enough to even support human life on the surface.

I am all for working on solutions though.

-FBB

reply to post by FriedBabelBroccoli


Wonder if this will have any impact on the Mars One mission?

Why don't we try to fully understand our own planet before going to Mars anyway? Think of all the unknown critters deep in the depths of the ocean. End Rant.

FriedBabelBroccoli
I get incredibly annoyed when a so called "science" program spends so much time trying to take shots at an extremely small portion of the population who really do not have much influence.

I'm not sure if the scientifically illiterate population is "extremely small" if you consider that even in the US and UK, about 1 in 4 people think the sun revolves around the Earth. There's also an embarrassingly large creationist population in the US, which isn't such a problem in the UK and other countries. It's really odd if McFarlane is catering to them now after he poked fun insults at them in "family guy".

The scientifically literate may find a show geared toward the masses beneath them, not that they wouldn't watch it but that they don't expect to learn anything, so maybe it's a little hard to tailor the show to an appropriate target audience. Do you think Sagan's version was better?

LucidLucinda
Why don't we try to fully understand our own planet before going to Mars anyway? Think of all the unknown critters deep in the depths of the ocean. End Rant.

We already have probes on Mars. I suspect it will be some time before we send humans there and we should know more about our planet by then, but in some ways exploring space is easier than exploring the deep ocean. Spacecraft only have to adjust for -1 atmosphere of pressure, where as exploring the ocean requires the craft to adjust for one atmosphere for every 33 feet of depth, and this is a tremendous challenge for humans. Its a little easier to send unmanned probes that deep, but it's still not easy and there is a lot of territory to cover.

Anyway I'm not sure why we can't do both at the same time? We could say maybe it costs too much but I can't agree with that given the US overspending on defense...that's what costs too much, as many scientists agree, including the Cosmos guy, Tyson.

Arbitrageur

FriedBabelBroccoli
I get incredibly annoyed when a so called "science" program spends so much time trying to take shots at an extremely small portion of the population who really do not have much influence.

I'm not sure if the scientifically illiterate population is "extremely small" if you consider that even in the US and UK, about 1 in 4 people think the sun revolves around the Earth. There's also an embarrassingly large creationist population in the US, which isn't such a problem in the UK and other countries. It's really odd if McFarlane is catering to them now after he poked fun insults at them in "family guy".

The scientifically literate may find a show geared toward the masses beneath them, not that they wouldn't watch it but that they don't expect to learn anything, so maybe it's a little hard to tailor the show to an appropriate target audience. Do you think Sagan's version was better?

Actually;
time.com...

Here’s the thing, though: Americans actually fared better than Europeans who took similar quizzes — at least when it came to the sun and Earth question. Only 66 percent of European Union residents answered that one correctly.

Europe actually fares even 'worse' than the United States. The methodology of the survey is also pretty suspect to be honest. Almost all the questions appear to be politically motivated and rely on no actual scientific literacy. Rather they rely on being able to repeat what is located in text books which have changed drastically since the period of time in which these folks went to school.

I would almost guarantee you that most of the "science literate" would fail a test if it at all involved a list of reasons as to why any of these concepts are considered fact by science.

-FBB