NASA is looking for volunteers to spend more time in bed.
According to News 13 in Orlando, the space agency needs volunteers to spend 70 days in bed for a sleep study. If you’re selected, NASA will compensate you for your time to the tune of $18,000.
The study wants to examine the long-term effects of space-flight on the human body. Volunteers are required to stay in bed for the duration of the experiment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t entertain yourself. You can read, play videogames, watch TV, work or do just about anything else as long as you stay in a prone position.
The study is being conducted at NASA’s Flight Analog Research Unit, where the space agency maintains a dedicated bed-rest study facility at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. The facility is equipped with beds that can be adjusted into positions that reproduce the effects of different gravity levels on the human body.
To apply, go to https://bedreststudy.jsc.nasa.gov/apply.aspx
Go to a hospital, there’s loads of people who have to stay in bed for over 70 days there, and you don’t even have to pay for it. Then again, that could probably mess up their results greatly.
Also, what if you have to go to the toilet?
And maybe it’s just me, but laying down for 70 whole days for only $18,000. Well, personally, I wouldn’t do it.
I’d do it, since that’s more than I’ve made the past few years. Also, I’ve never been to Galveston, so that’d be something to do when I finally got out of bed 🙂
And using sick people in a test environment for experiments would just be wrong, dude. It’d probably be very hard to get accurate feedback from very ill or comatose people, plus there’s probably a health baseline you’d have to meet before you could participate.
And you know how those sick people who actually can’t get out of bed go to the toilet? There are these things called bed pans… and these things called sponge baths…
My lower back and my ability to breath couldn’t take 70 days in the prone position. You do realize prone position means lying flat on your stomach for 70 days? I might be able to do it supine or moving from side to side like I do on a nightly basis, but never prone, not even for 18 grand.
I wonder if it’s a regular bed, or some sort of bed they’re testing out.
Astronauts lie face down? That’s odd. Also, they do get up, they don’t spend their entire mission lying down
NASA wants almost astronaut level health to use as an astronaut baseline to see how things atrophy. SO until I can pass a level III Air force level physical, I will have to continue to just read about it.