Abstract
Spaceflight, whether it be a suborbital joyride, a flight to an orbiting outpost, or an interplanetary flight beyond Earth orbit, is by several orders of magnitude far, far more hazardous than flying commercial. Why? Well, aside from the obvious risks posed by acceleration, radiation exposure and explosive decompression, there are the risks associated with pre-existing medical conditions, which may not only be aggravated by being subjected to stressors such as acceleration and microgravity but could potentially be fatal. So, it is helpful to have a rudimentary understanding of how the operational environment may affect commercial astronauts.
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Notes
- 1.
A “G” is a measure of the acceleration of an object normalized by the acceleration caused by gravity. Without considering air resistance, gravitational pull causes free-falling objects to change their speeds by a constant of 9.81 m/s2. Dividing acceleration (calculated as change of velocity divided by time) by this constant yields the acceleration in Gs.
- 2.
The Armstrong Line (18,900–19,350 meters) has nothing to do with Neil Armstrong. The ‘line’ is named after Harry George Armstrong, who founded the U.S. Air Force’s Department of Space Medicine, and it represents the altitude that produces an atmospheric pressure so low that water boils at normal body temperature. In fact, if you were exposed to an altitude above the line, your exposed bodily liquids would simply boil away, and you’d be dead within a minute or two.
- 3.
Neurogenesis is a term that describes the formation of neurons. Since the formation of neurons may be sensitive to radiation, it is possible that long-term exposure may result in cognitive deficits.
- 4.
Oxidative stress is a term that describes the imbalance between the production of free radicals and the ability of the body to neutralize these free radicals using antioxidants. Free radicals are molecules that contain oxygen. These molecules have one or more unpaired electrons, which means they are very reactive with other molecules which in turn means they are capable of chemically interacting with and destabilizing cells such as DNA. Under normal conditions, antioxidants prevent these reactions.
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Seedhouse, E. (2024). Operational Medicine. In: Commercial Astronauts. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55604-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55604-3_6
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