Angeli Bukley – författare

Winner of the IAA 2008 Life Science Book AwardThis award is given annually to recognize excellence in publication made by a member or a corresponding member of the Academy in the fields related to life science. Protecting the health, safety, and performance of exploration-class mission crews against the physiological deconditioning resulting from long-term weightlessness during transit and long-term reduced gravity during surface operations will require effective, multi-system countermeasures. Artificial gravity, which would replace terrestrial gravity with inertial forces generated by rotating the transit vehicle or by short-radius human centrifuge devices within the transit vehicle or surface habitat, has long been considered a potential solution. However, despite its attractiveness as an efficient, multi-system countermeasure and its potential for improving the environment and simplifying operational activities, much still needs to be learned regarding the human response to rotating environments before artificial gravity can be successfully implemented.This book reviews the principle and rationale for using artificial gravity during space missions, and describes the current options proposed, including a short-radius centrifuge contained within a spacecraft.Experts provide recommendations on the research needed to assess whether or not short-radius centrifuge workouts can help limit deconditioning of physiological systems.

William H. Paloski, Ph. D. Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office NASA Johnson Space Center Artificial gravity is an old concept, having gotten its start in the late in the 19th century when Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, considered by many to be the father of the Russian space program, realized that the human body might not respond well to the free fall of orbital space flight. To solve this problem, he proposed that space stations be rotated to create centripetal accelerations that might provide inertial loading similar to terrestrial gravitational loading. Einstein later showed in his equivalence principle that acceleration is indeed indistinguishable from gravity. Subsequently, other individuals of note, including scientists like Werner von Braun as well as artists like Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, devised elaborate solutions for spinning vehicles to provide “artificial gravity” that would offset the untoward physiological consequences of spaceflight. By 1959, concerns about the then-unknown human responses to spaceflight drove NASA to consider the necessity of incorporating artificial gravity in its earliest human space vehicles. Of course, owing in part to the relatively short durations of the planned missions, artificial gravity was not used in the early NASA programs.