Sick in Space It’s not just a problem for astronauts anymore. -
By Michael Klesius - AirSpaceMag.com, March 09, 2009 Poor
Gherman Titov, the second human in orbit. By the time the
Soviets flew him in August 1961, Yuri Gagarin had grabbed the
glory four months earlier. Unlike Gagarin, who had made just one
orbit, Titov was subjected to 17, which took a little more than
a day. That might have granted the kid bragging rights—he was 25
years old, and remains the youngest person ever in space. But
after a few orbits, Titov suddenly grew nauseous, and
then—horror of horrors for any military pilot turned
cosmonaut—he threw up. It looked like a rookie problem, but
Sergei Korolyov, the legendary engineer who headed the Soviet
space effort, took it very seriously. “Korolyov shut down the
manned spaceflight program for a year,” says Chuck Oman, a
neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“They didn’t know what they were dealing with. At first they
wondered if it was triggered by some central nervous s