Always wanted to boldy go where only astronauts had gone before, but figured a chronic disease blocked your path?
Fear not, says a new study out of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
UTMB aerospace medicine doctors are reporting that people with preexisting ailments historically considered risky in a spaceflight environment -- heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, lung disease such as emphysema or asthma and back and neck injuries – had no problem tolerating simulated spaceflight launch and re-entry.
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The UTMB team conducted the study on 86 people with such medical conditions, placing them in a centrifuge machine that creates the effects of spaceflight by spinning a test subject with his or her feet outward 30 times a minute. None of the participants experienced significant adverse responses.
"Our goal was to see how average people with common medical problems, who aren't necessarily as fit as a career astronaut, would be able to tolerate these stresses of an anticipated commercial spaceflight," said Dr. Rebecca Blue, a UTMB aerospace medicine doctor and the study's lead author. "The study further supports the belief that, despite significant chronic medical conditions, the dream of spaceflight is one that most people can achieve."
The research team is trying to determine health standards for private space travel. Now whether Virgin Galactic, the private company whose plans to offer rides into suborbital space keep getting delayed, ever actually gets off the ground is another thing.
You can read the study in the journal Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine here.
