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NASA's Mission to Lie Around in Bed for Months

You can be paid to take a 70-day trip to the Planet Sloth.
The right stuff via Wikimedia Commons

If the worst part of your workday is just getting out of bed in the morning, a career change might be in order. Have you ever considered working for NASA? In order to understand and plan for longer and longer missions in outer space, including hypothetical trips to Mars or beyond, NASA is looking for would-be Johns and Yokos to lie around for 70 days in Galveston, Texas.

NASA has been sending people to the planet sloth for years now, as a cheap way to explore how the human body changes without the influence of gravity. Since achieving low gravity on Earth can only be achieved for seconds at a time—and involves diving in an airliner or dropping something down a 467 foot shaft—bed rest is the best way to emulate low gravity without leaving the Earth.

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So the subjects are paid—around $18,000, according to Forbes—to lie there for 24-hours a day; only getting up for specific tests breaks up the otherwise steady stream of bedtimes. Showering, eating, going to the bathroom are all done from the comfort of bed. If that seems like it might have an adverse effect on the body, you’re right, but, then, that’s the point.

According to Bill Paloski, principal scientist in NASA’s Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office, during extended bed rest, muscles begin to atrophy and bone density decreases. Your overall fitness level decreases because your heart isn’t working as hard to pump your blood. This is the same thing that happens to astronauts who are in space for long periods of time, because “they don’t need to use more than fingertips propel themselves across the room.”

Other things happen to the body in space—bodily fluids, normally weighed down by Earth, tend to stay at the top of the body. To recreate this, the beds are slanted back about six degrees, with the feet above the head. Test subject Nathan Thomas said he felt this in his nose. “It feels like I’ve got a sinus problem,” he told NASA in 2006.

NASA hopes to use bed rest to understand what physiological changes happen to the body in a long-term low-gravity situation, and what tasks it renders difficult. Some research subjects test exercise that may fight the atrophy. With this information, the agency hopes to create better countermeasures, so that someday when humans someday touch down on Mars or elsewhere, they are able to stand up and walk around.

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Beyond the physical component, the mission also seems like it would just be hard on the psyche. Heather Archuletta was doing the study until it was cut short by Hurricane Ike, and said it was hard to give up moving around. "I always get out of bed and either run, go rollerblading or to the gym," she said. "That's a big change, and I have bottled-up energy in place of all the calories I'm not burning."

So patients have access to video games, television and the internet. They can play board games with other bed-ridden astronauts. And they’re encouraged to pursue hobbies—learn musical instruments or foreign languages—while on their backs. "If you walk though our unit, you will not see people lying around bored," said project manager Joe Neigut. "They're very busy. Their phones are ringing. They're usually enjoying themselves.”

That actually does make it sound kind of fun. If you didn’t have anything else to do, think of all you could get done! People catch up on their reading, they learn sign language and study for graduate school.

While it seems like pretty much the least physically demanding task possible, test subjects still have to pass a “Modified Air Force Class III Physical,” and must be “nonsmokers, age 25 to 55, and in good health,” according to the study’s website. Also, “women must not be using hormones nor be menopausal,” presumably because bones can change during menopause, even if one isn’t voluntarily confined to a bed.

If you're qualified, and have long dreamed of seeing the ceilings of Galveston, Texas, in person, you can apply online here. In your own way, you'd be paving the way for future missions to great beyond, thousands of miles away. In this case, the journey doesn't even begin with a single step.

Image of Connect Four via NASA.