Space Travel Still No Piece Of Cake

July 28, 1992

Since April 12, 1961, when Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space, public reaction to manned space flight has shifted from ``gee whiz`` to ``ho hum.``

After the 1983 Challenger explosion, space shuttle flights have become almost routine affairs. Televised pictures of astronauts happily cavorting in zero gravity provide a misleading image that space travel is a casual endeavor. Now comes a strong reminder -- unpleasant but necessary -- that space travel always has been and will be a hazardous business. Researchers have just reported that during a June 1991 space biology mission by the space shuttle Columbia, both astronauts and rats used in testing fared poorly. The humans suffered unexpectedly dramatic effects of weightlessness, including a severe loss of muscle tissue, blood-pressure irregularities and reduced ability to burn stored fat for energy. They also took a very long time to recover after returning. The rats suffered severe problems with organs that maintain orientation and balance.

All these effects had been measured in previous, much longer manned flights, but the degree of the problems on this nine-day flight was higher than expected.

The new findings should raise some warning flags around NASA, Congress and the White House, and force policy-makers to ask some hard questions:

What kinds of studies and tests are needed to measure, and what methods must be devised to deal with, negative health impacts of space travel?

How much more difficult and unhealthy are long-term space flights going to be than previously thought, such as the planned space station Freedom and a proposed mission to Mars early in the next century?

Should space stations or interplanetary space vehicles be redesigned to include some spin to provide artificial gravity? Or should they give way to unmanned vehicles?

Freedom missions are set to last several months. A Mars mission would take nearly three years, round-trip. Two Soviet cosmonauts once spent a record 366 days in orbit; the U.S. record is 84 days during a 1973-1974 Skylab space station mission.

Space may indeed be the final frontier, and the greatest challenge to mankind`s spirit of exploration.

Yet, as we ``boldly go where no one has gone before,`` we need to understand that the real threat may not be from evil alien beings but from our own bodies, telling us in loud but unmistakable ways that ``space travel may be hazardous to your health.``