Aug 27 1974
From The Space Library
27-29 August: A Skylab Life Sciences Symposium at Johnson Space Center reported medical results of the three Skylab missions. Conference Chair-man Richard S. Johnston, Director of Life Sciences at JSC, said that nothing in the medical results would preclude man from spending up to a year in space. Dr. G. D. Whedon of the National Institutes of Health stated that weightlessness could threaten capable musculo-skeletal functions during space flights lasting up to three years unless measures could be developed to prevent significant losses of calcium, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Continued loss of calcium could cause astronauts to break their backs or legs and could promote formation of kidney stones.
Dr. William E. Thornton, life scientist in the JSC Astronaut Office, reported that by Mission Day 3 all Skylab crewmen had lost more than 2000 cc (2 qts) of extravascular fluid from calf and thigh; at recovery, a sharp reversal was noted. The Thornton team suggested that the reason for the shift was the intrinsic and unopposed lower limb elasticity, which forced venous blood and other fluids toward the head. Other investigators reported that such cardiovascular changes as the heart's decreased ventricular size and the suppression of red blood cell production was the body's accommodation to weightlessness. These physiological changes had been the expected response to a lack of exertion; they reversed after the astronauts' return to earth. (JSC Roundup, 30 Aug 74, 1-2; JSC proj off, interview, 12 Aug 75; Altman, NYT, 1 Sept 74, 14)
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