Anna
Fisher who has been named godmother of the
Viking Orion ship - ALASTAIR MILLER 2012
The
dream of boldly going where only a few have gone
before has inspired hundreds of people to sign up
with space tourism companies like Virgin Galactic.
ButNasaastronautAnna
Fisher, who made history by becoming the
first mother in space, has warned many are
unprepared for the rigours of spaceflight and the
toll it will take on their bodies.
Dr
Fisher said she was sick for the first two days of
her mission on the Discovery space shuttle in 1984
and said she was concerned that people paying
hundreds of thousands of poundsdid
not fully appreciate what might happen.
Speaking
to The Telegraph as she was made godmother to the
new Viking Orion ship, she said: “The one
thing I am concerned about with tourists in space
is people thinking you can just get on a rocket
and just go into space.
“It’s
not like riding a commercial aircraft, not at all,
and I can see all these problems with people up
there and throwing up and messing up somebody’s
flight that they paid $250,000 for.
Astronaut
Anna Fisher shortly after her selection
for Nasa Credit:
Bettmann Corbis Historical
“Your
first moments in space are not always your best. I
remember when we were in the shuttle and you are
at 3Gs for the last two minutes or so, and it’s a
little hard to breathe and then the engine shuts
off, and boom, you’re weightless, it’s that
fast.
“I
could feel the blood rushing and in 30 seconds I
was going ‘uh oh’, I am going to be one of the
ones who is not going to feel good and I was
extremely grateful that I had eaten absolutely
nothing for breakfast.
“I
was lucky I never threw up, because if you think
throwing up is bad here on the ground it’s really
bad in space.”
To
date only the Russian Space Agency,Roscosmos,
has taken tourists into space, between 2001 and
2009, at a cost between $20 and $40 million.
However aerospace companies like Blue Origin,
Virgin Galactic and SpaceX are hoping to launch
commercial flights within the next decade.
Dr
Fisher said she felt sick for two days on
the Discovery space shuttle Credit:
KEYSTONE Pictures USA
People
who have already bought tickets include the actors
Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet and LeonardoDiCaprio,
and Stephen Hawking was planning to fly withVirgin
Galacticbefore his death
earlier this year.
The
Apollo 8 crew were the first astronauts to report
space sickness in 1968, and by Apollo 9 the crews
were feeling so bad that their spacewalk had to be
rescheduled. Nasa’s training aircraft where
astronauts can experience weightless is
colloquially known as the ‘vomit comet’ because it
makes people feel so ill.
It
is widely known thatmicrogravityseriously
impacts metabolism, heat regulation, heart
rhythm, muscle tone, bone density, eyesight, and
the respiration system.
Both
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have signed
up to fly with Virgin Galactic Credit:
Dominic Lipinski PA
In
2016,researchfrom
the US also found that astronauts whotravelled
into deep space on lunar missionswere
five times more likely to have died from
cardiovascular disease than those who went into
low orbit, or never left Earth.
And
last year Russian scientists found microgravitycauses
such alarming changes to the immune system,
that astronauts would struggle to shake off even
a minor virus, like the common cold if they
became infected.
Smith
Johnson, flight surgeon for Nasa, warned that
space travel has a major impact on health with
many astronauts coming back down to Earth
looking like ‘boneless chickens.’
They
also suffer from a condition called Mal de
debarguement, similar to that experienced by
sailors who have been at sea, who need to
reacclimatise to being back on land.
“It’s
a dangerous business,” said Dr Johnson, “The
bottom line is every system of the body is
affected by microgravity, whether it’s kidney
stones, receptor touch, fluid redistribution,
inner ear changes, losing ten times your bone
mass.
“We
also get ten times the radiation. Sometimes
astronauts come down and look like a boneless
chicken.
Denis
Tito is one of only a handful of paying
civilians who have been in orbit around
the earthCredit:
Reuters
“Also
in your sensory canals there is a mismatch
between what you’re feeling and seeing so it
take a while to adapt not only to get your space
legs when you come back you find you are
actually walking down the hall at an angle
because you have to recalibrate to not moving
all over the place.”
And
not only are their dangers in space, but also
back on the ground. Dr Johnson said it took
around two weeks to recover from spaceflight,
with astronauts warned not to drive for a
fortnight and resist flying for a month.
And
during the weeks when the spine is adjusting to
Earth’s gravity, space travellers will be
13 times more likely to suffer a slipped
disc.
“You
elongate in space, and flatten out so back pain
can be a problem for weeks to months up in space
but when you return and think you can
rollerblading three days after you’ve landed and
you end up in a ditch,” he added.
British
astronaut Tim Peake Credit:
NASA
Space
agencies are particularly worried by solar and
cosmic radiation and have still not come up with
a way to protect astronauts on lengthy visits to
Mars or the Moon. The Apollo 14 mission missed a
dangerous solar flare by just two weeks which
could have caused cancer or even killed the
crew.