The journal Nature recently published a package of 44 papers about aerospace medicine and space biology. Beyond the specific findings of each paper, what was really noteworthy was the fact that they included data from the all-civilian crew of the Inspiration4 from September 2021.
Aria Alamalhodaei argued that this is a sign we’re at the beginning of a renaissance for human spaceflight research, including research about what happens to our bodies in space.
It’s not that we don’t have any data about this. Obviously, astronauts have been going into space for decades, and some of them are staying at the International Space Station for months or years, which is a lot longer than the three-day Inspiration4 mission.
But it’s worthwhile to study the impact of a much briefer period in space, and to get data from people who aren’t professional astronauts. After all, those astronauts tend to be drawn from the best and the brightest — if a less-impressive specimen like yours truly goes to space, the results might be a bit different.
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