Another Reason to Avoid Space in the Pre-MNT Era Friday, Jun 5 2009
space 7:29 pm
‘Space headaches’ come out of the blue:
Researchers are calling for space headache to be established as a new secondary disorder after carrying out a study of 17 astronauts, published in the June issue of Cephalalgia.
Their study jettisons the theory that astronauts’ headaches are normally caused by space motion sickness, after showing that more than three-quarters of those studied had no connection.
“Our research shows that space flights may trigger headaches without other space motion sickness symptoms in otherwise super healthy subjects” says lead researcher Dr Alla Vein from Professor Michel Ferrari’s Headache Research team at the Department of Neurology, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands.
Space headaches in “super-healthy” subjects! Just great. If you go up there, enjoy your atrophying muscles, cramped rooms, boredom, cosmic rays, micrometeorites, crappy toilets, foliage-free environment, etc.
Big, air-filled bubbles with self-healing membranes and spinning colonies with artificial gravity. It’s the only way.
Launch costs need to be brought WAY down. J. Storrs Hall’s Space Pier or Brian Wang’s nuclear cannon. Our clique has all the answers, y’know?
Haha, please. You have NO answers.
Except for the space pier and nuclear cannon.
Sure, I know, monkeys in a can is not practical, but I will look at you with bitter eyes for trashing one of my dreams, you bully you.
We already know that living in zero-g for extended periods of time is bad for one’s health. This “space” headache appears be just another bad effect of zero-g. Even the L-5 Society 30 year ago believed that space colonization would only be feasible with artificial gravity. What else is new?
Of course launch costs need to come down. Laser launch and perhaps fusion (either Bussard’s polywell or Helion’s FRC) rocketry are likely to help here.
A heads up for you guys. R&D on Bussard’s polywell is being funded by the Navy and there are several privately financed efforts into developing fusion power, such as Helion, General Fusion, and Tri-Alpha.
Off-topic, but relevant to your interest, Michael: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/02/solar-wind-atmosphere-02.html — The Earth, despite it’s magnetic field, is losing atmosphere at a much faster rate than either Venus or Mars.