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OCR for page 1
On the Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Research Program
On the Extended Duration
Orbiter Medical Research Program
On December 20, 1989, Space Studies Board Chair Louis J. Lanzerottie
and Committee on Space Biology and Medicine Chair L. Dennis Smith sent the
following letter to NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly.
As Chairman of the Space Studies Board (SSB) and Chairman of the
SSB's Committee on Space Biology and Medicine (CSBM), it is our responsibility
to keep you apprised of issues of particular concern to the CSBM and the Board.
At its last two meetings1, the CSBM was briefed on the agency's
Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) Program. In response to a request for
information, the committee also received a letter summarizing EDO activities at
JSC and has evaluated summary data on landings of previous STS flights 1-24.
Based on this information, critical issues appear to exist concerning the
ability of crews to perform the visual and manual. tasks involved :In piloting
and landing the orbiter and the capacity of crews to achieve unaided
regress after residence in the microgravity environment of space. These
issues relate to the safety of shuttle crews on short-term as well as extended
duration flights. Both the CSBM and the SSB are concerned with the
adequacy of the proposed EDO Medical Research Program to support the
development of appropriate countermeasures against physiological
adaptations to microgravity and allow for the enhancement and prediction
of crew performance during and after the critical phases associated with
orbiter landings.
We believe that the complex and lengthy process of developing
countermeasures requires an understanding of the basic biological processes
that underlie physiological adaptation to microgravity. With respect to the
adequacy of the EDO Medical Research Program, the SSB and CSBM have
identified two major issues: (1) Does the proposed research adequately link
gravitational effects to the critical human behaviors? (2) Will the proposed
research be subjected to rigorous, extramural peer review to ascertain whether it
utilizes the most appropriate methodology and meets the highest standards? We
believe that the development of countermeasures that will affect crew
performance is an extremely important and difficult task that requires the use of
new approaches in a strong collaborative effort involving the Astronaut Office,
NASA flight surgeons and in-house scientists, and extramural basic and clinical
scientists. The information made available to the CSBM indicates that the EDO
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On the Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Research Program
Medical Research Program is a continuation of long-standing protocols to
measure changes in cardiovascular function/orthostatic tolerance, muscle
function, aerobic and metabolic capacity and neurosensory function. The
committee is of the opinion that such a program will be insufficient to answer the
major questions. The EDO Medical Research Program must be firmly based on
scientific concepts and methods, and the development of appropriate and
statistically valid decision rules must precede any in-flight or ground- based
evaluation of a proposed countermeasure. We are aware that the EDO Medical
Program is in the final planning stages and hope that there is still some flexibility
to affect the research that will be undertaken. Attachment A contains a set of
recommendations from the Committee on Space Biology and Medicine that might
better address both our near-term safety concerns and those associated with the
goals of the EDO program.2
It is because of our serious reservations concerning the safety of our
astronauts and continued success of the U.S. space program that we felt
compelled to bring this issue to your attention. We would be happy to meet with
you and discuss these issues further, or to help in any other way we can.
1. CSBM Meeting 6/1 - 6/2/89, Washington, D.C., and CSBM Meeting 9/27 -
9/29/89, Washington, D.C.
2. The recommendations in Attachment A derive in large part from the strategies
previously prepared by the CSBM (A Strategy for Space Biology and Medical
Science for the 1980's and 1990's) [NAP, 1987] and, Life Beyond the Earth's
Environment (NAP, 1979]). We understand that some of these recommendations
may have already been taken into account including the use of external
disciplinary working groups to evaluate proposals.
ATTACHMENT A
The Committee on Space Biology and Medicine offers the following
comments and recommendations as a possible approach to addressing the near-
term safety issues associated with shuttle landings and the EDO Medical
Research Program. A prerequisite for the success of the program is access to all
pertinent individual data characterizing physiological functions, crew
performance, and their interrelationship during the critical return to the 1-g
environment. This effort will require a new level of collaboration between
astronauts, flight surgeons, and scientists and also the development of a set of
well-defined rules to maximize data access while protecting the individual crew
member.
A purely empirical program that relies primarily on in-flight application of
multiple countermeasures in a small number of subjects, and employs only
simple traditional methods to determine outcome is unlikely to produce optimal
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On the Extended Duration Orbiter Medical Research Program
countermeasures. Countermeasures to be considered for in-flight must have a
well-defined scientific rationale. A successful program will utilize data derived
from work at all levels, including ground-based studies in different animal and
human models.
(1) An evaluation of existing data on landing parameters characterizing crew
performance and physiological functions from previous orbiter re-entries and
landings and a determination of whether more sophisticated measures of these
parameters should be developed and employed. The aviation research
capabilities of Ames and Dryden could prove useful in this regard. Related to this,
there should be review of the FAA database relative to crew performance under a
variety of environmental conditions including fatigue and circadian dysrhythmia.
(2) Develop an empirically based program to compare systematically landing
performance on re-entry with that shown in orbiter configured aircraft and
simulators.
(3) Explore the feasibility of using changes in gravity and/or bedrest as an
experimental factor influencing piloting performance. This could involve use of the
reactivated centrifuge at Ames to induce gravity changes prior to or in concert
with performance of perceptual/motor tests in the centrifuge and piloting tasks in
a simulator.
(4) Fully utilize the existing database on deconditioning and the effects of
countermeasures on physiological responses to microgravity to design all
experiments on all forthcoming shuttle flights.
(5) Develop animal models to measure effects of microgravity on muscle function,
neurosensory function, etc. The use of appropriate model systems should
enhance the database quantitatively and allow more selected confirmatory
experiments of the relatively small number of human subjects available for study.
(6) Utilize disciplinary working groups set up by the Aerospace Medical Advisory
Committee to provide appropriate recommendations and peer review for
proposed research projects.
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