

Seed funding from NASA: 5K per month for lying down - utnick
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/nasa-offers-500.html

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xirium
Its not the worst source of funding suggested on this forum. See
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=132400>

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mechanical_fish
Are we sure about that? From the Wired Q&A:

"We give them approximately two weeks of recovery time on the unit. We monitor
them and give them rehabilitation exercises. That's _usually_ enough to bring
them back to normal functioning..." [emphasis mine]

"They will lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone per month. That's not going to
come back within two weeks. So, we bring them back at six months and then a
year later to look at their bone density...

"What we tell people is that they will lose bone and _it may never return to
their prestudy levels_. It's entirely possible, but a significant number [of
people] do return to their normal density..." [emphasis mine]

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Hmm, malaria plus some chance of recurrent malaria, vs loss of muscle tone
requiring physical therapy plus potentially permanent loss of bone density?
Not an easy call, really.

At least their simulation of space travel doesn't include the cosmic radiation
or the risk of explosive decompression.

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bprater
I wonder if doing jumping jacks on the bed counts.

Talk about cabin fever. I don't think I could do it.

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tylercarbone
I wonder if they'll let you develop your product while in bed.

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tomjen
In another post they had an interview with one of the researchers - apparently
each of the test persons who comes in should have a goal (one of them was
learning a new language). So this might not be so bad an idea after all.

