The Complete Book of Outer Space – Part 3 of 14

Space Medicine In this installment, Dr Heinz Haber discusses the budding science of space medicine and the issues it must address in relation to space travel and exploration.  The problems of air supply and heat exchange are touched upon as are the hazards of high energy particles.  But the major portion of the chapter goes towards addressing the issue of weightlessness.  This was written before man had gone into space, or even experienced zero-g for longer than a few seconds.  The issue is discussed in the areas of physiology, body movement and orientation, and resulting nausea.  As an aside, I have almost completed Ben Bova’s Grand Tour on audio book.  On many occasions throughout the series he talks about the (now well established) effects of zero-g on people new to the experience.  Dr. Haber seems quite on the money with his descriptions of the likely effects of the experience.  So here we are, Space Medicine:

View this document on Scribd
You can see Dr. Haber in action in a well known Disney documentary from 1957, ‘Our Friend the Atom’ on Youtube.  Recommended viewing, and a great piece of nostalgia. Next up on the 15th of May, Dr. Donald Howard Menzel then Acting Director of Harvard College Observatory, informs us about the requirements of Space Suits.

Advertisement

...Report in...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: