Idea for artificial gravity on the space station

All of my comments are my own personal beliefs and do not necessarily state undisputable facts nor are they intended to cause anyone any personal harm. My only intention is to provide good ideas to people that can make the difference between success and failure for our glorious space program that captures the hearts and minds of people all over the world.

The diameter of useable cylindrical space inside of the ISS is about 14 feet. Safely operating a rotating device in a 0 G environment inside of the ISS that rotates at an average speed of 10 mph at the feet (23 rpm) easily achieves a 1 G force at the feet and much less at the head.

The artificial gravity acceleration force in a 0 G environment pulls needed bone nutrients inside of the bone marrow areas in a downward direction along the body’s longitudinal axis to adequately accommodate the bone building process that maintains bone strength, especially in the legs and hips. It is my strong belief that this motion of nutrients inside of the bone structure is what causes bone growth and repair. This is how it works in a 1 G environment on the ground. The leg and hip bones accommodate the major weight bearing forces in the body. Simply standing or walking on the ground strengthens the bones. Most people with good bone health do this for a reasonable period of time each day without any cognitive thought of what they are actually doing to their bones. The common remedy for people with osteoporosis on the ground is to walk a lot. I believe this bone building process cannot be achieved with strenuous weight lifting alone since these straining forces are applied to bone structure and not to the viscous bone marrow areas.

I believe you periodically need acceleration forces applied to bone marrow areas inside of the bone structure to activate the bone repair process in a 0 G environment. I challenge you to prove me wrong. NASA is currently trying to prove me wrong with the recently installed squat machine in the ISS that accommodates up to 300+ lbs of straining force on the body.

Only time will tell if this results in the desired bone strengthening effect. If it works, you will see the results in public forums within a year. If it doesn’t work, you will never see the results in a public forum and NASA will be forced to go back to scratching your heads. To prove my point, try finding any bone loss results in a public forum from the ISS renal stone prevention experiments that used bone building supplements (calcium tablets) for several years on several crews.

It makes no sense to me to directly contact people involved with these types of supplement experiments sense it conflicts with what they are trying to accomplish. My hope is to find someone who is willing to consider new ideas on ways to extend human presence in space using the obvious method of a prescribed amount of intermittent artificial gravity exposure on humans living in space in existing space facilities.

I predict the weight machine won't maintain bone strength since NASA has already tried various strenuous exercises throughout all of the manned space programs to a smaller degree without attaining the desired result. It’s worth a try for sure, since it also addresses muscle atrophy. But the bone loss show stopper for sending humans to distant destinations in space is the most critical in terms of feasible cost within our lifetimes.

In all probability, the weight machine will be subjecting the crew’s bones to more and more severe stresses while their bones are getting weaker and weaker. This scenario can only lead to more and more strenuous exercise until someone gets hurt. I believe NASA is simply banging your heads against the wall, so to speak, and the crews don’t realize the current health danger they are in. If you keep banging your head against the wall, you will eventually succumb to mind-numbing pain and stop doing that. Even approaching this desired result cautiously using this technique of resistant type exercises in space is going to take a lot of effort for a very long time that could be better utilized or supplemented with the obvious solution of performing intermittent artificial gravity exercise on the ISS. Intermittent artificial gravity exposure does not expose the crews to the same strenuous stresses on their skeletal structure as strenuous exercise does.

All it takes is a crack in the door, i.e., one person willing to commit themselves to subjecting their body with intermittent artificial gravity during their exercise periods while in space for six months. I believe these potential volunteers exist since astronauts would rather spend their time getting paid doing a job in space rather than training for it on the ground. Their courageous and overwhelming desire and dedication to living in space means someone might want to make a significant space program contribution if you provide them the opportunity. It would be a simple matter to conduct a poll of the current astronaut corps to find out who is interested in partaking in this most noble cause. I predict you won’t be disappointed.

The time it takes to operate an intermittent artificial gravity device does not interfere with time spent doing ISS operations since they are relegated to exercise each day anyway. The volunteered crews just do it during their scheduled exercise periods each day or whatever rate they are initially comfortable with. It doesn’t have to be labeled as an experiment, per se, since it involves cardiovascular and muscle exercise which is a mandatory requirement for health maintenance.

The right design and placement of an intermittent artificial gravity device can be achieved to meet all operational and crew safety constraints. I believe the initial proof of concept using just one committed individual will show spectacular results and pave the way to truly extending human presence in space. If successful in stopping bone loss, this person, including all of NASA, will be rewarded far beyond their wildest expectations. If not successful, they lose nothing since they exercised and maintained their cardiovascular health anyway. They dismantle the exercise device and utilize the space for other things with no permanent change to the ISS configuration.

NASA performed an artificial gravity experiment on humans during a previous shuttle mission, but only proved you can do it in space. Unfortunately, they were not in space long enough to see any results since you don’t lose much bone mass in 10 days. The bone loss during a six month stay in space, however, is quite noticeable and easily measured. Just like for the weight machine, don’t you think it is worth a try?

The immediate payoff for finding a way of extending the current six month time limit for crews living in the ISS is in case the ground cannot access the ISS with a fresh crew for whatever reason. This would mitigate the problem of having to abandon the ISS because of an extended delay in access to the ISS. We already have enough supplies and spares onboard to last a minimal crew and the ISS for three years but not a way to stop their bone loss. The bone loss and radiation problems are the last remaining obstacles to safely extending our goal of exploring other destinations. If we safely give these problems the one-two punch, with minimal cost, no one can stand in our way to achieve our goals in space using existing affordable technology.

If you temporarily replace four opposing racks in a pressurized module in the ISS with airspace, you have the space needed to install a human powered rotatable apparatus that can safely and intermittently expose people to various levels of artificial gravity during their exercise routines. But you might immediately conclude, like most people, that spinning people in space is going to make them sick or cause them long lasting vestibular effects.

Eliminating the dizzying effects of spinning is accomplished by affixing the person's head so it does not tilt or turn side-to-side during rotation. Ever notice astronauts very rarely rotate their heads while in space? The elimination of the dizzying effects of spinning has already been shown by people working ground experiments at M.I.T. Installing a face rest on the apparatus similar to one used on massage tables accomplishes this requirement. The person simply places their face on the face rest while their body is restrained with quick release straps and initiates the motion. Starting and stopping the device from rotating are details left to the design. It is not impossible to design a system that minimizes the impacts to the ISS angular momentum and attitude control system.

The sad truth to this proposed bone loss solution is that it may well take a higher authority than NASA to at least try it in the ISS since NASA is very resistant to changing the way NASA do things in the ISS.

The major obstacle facing this proposed solution is all of the operational and crew safety constraints that require compliance. I have analyzed them extensively and have practical solutions for complying with each one. The space research community is ill-equipped to address them since their background is incompatible with space operations. Their space experiment proposals seem to hit this wall of constraints quite a lot. They have been trained to only propose the ones that offer minimal weight, volume, and crew impacts and don’t make any noise or motion or expel undesired gases. I believe this proposal can meet these constraints since I have independently analyzed them for four plus years.

This proposal would provide an excellent opportunity for young people enrolled in universities to make a major contribution to the space program. Enrollment and granted funding in biological space research studies at universities would likely explode.

I completely respect NASA's decisions. I realize NASA is much more concerned about getting up there and back safely and simply surviving for 6 months until the bone-depleted crews can be replaced by new crews with fresh bones to dissolve. NASA is even considering screening the crews to ones that have big bones for long duration missions, which only solves the bone loss problem temporarily and does not address the long term goals of sending humans on long duration exploration missions in space. What a better and safer place to conduct such an experiment than on the ISS in low earth orbit. Waiting to see the results from outpost crews on the Moon if far more risky than finding the solution on an Earth orbiting laboratory designed specifically to do such biological research.

Thanks for your time. Would love to hear your comments!