Broadcast 1113 (Special Edition)

Guests: Dr. Tom Jones, Dr. Charles Oman, Ron Small. Topics: Spatial disorientation, space motion sickness, vertigo, solutions. Our guests today, Dr. Jones, Dr. Oman, and Ron Small, are involved in a research project with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to assist pilots in real-time to overcome spatial disorientation for aviation and space. We also talked about motion sickness, particularly space motion sickness, and ways to combat it. Physiology plays a big part in both disorientation and motion sickness, so you will want to hear what our guests had to say. In discussing the events, we discussed suborbital spaceflight for passengers, space walks, aviation and more. Listeners asked about applying lessons learned to senior citizens, nursing homes, and throughout the general population. We even got into the possible impact of obesity and disorientation and motion sickness. As you will hear, so far there is no correlation with obesity and these conditions though a ground experiment on this issue would likely prove useful. We talked about vertigo, medication, even instrument and vehicle designs. If anyone wants to learn more about disorientation and space sickness in orbit, please visit http://www.dsls.usra.edu/archive_2007.html and listen to the Grand Rounds lecture given by Dr. Charles Oman last year to the flight surgeon residents in the UTMB/NASA program in Galveston and Clear Lake. It is a streaming video, and lasts about 45 minutes. In addition, you can learn more about the NSBRI program at http://www.nsbri.org/Research/Neuro.html . If you have questions or comments for any of our guests, please send your note to me at drspace@thespaceshow.com and I will forward it to the guest of your choice or all three of them.