'Pillownauts' embrace bed linen for zero-grav experience
Published: 04 June 2009
Astronauts may have a little bit more to worry about than freeze-dried food and dodgy toilets when travelling over long distances, with so-called 'pillownauts' reclining on comforters and bed linen to put the body through a synthesised lack of gravity.
Nasa needs more volunteers for one of the easiest-looking jobs in the world: playing games, reading books and generally chilling out in bed for £3,500 a month.Well, it sounds easy, yet however comfortable the bedding is, it may not prepare you for the pain you will endure in a simulation of zero gravity, according to technology resource Popular Science.
Heather Archuletta agreed to lie still for a few months without needing her arm twisted, though she no doubt felt that sensation later as the body starts to exhibit strange characteristics including throbbing feet, leaking eyes and face-splitting headaches.
Ms Archuletta, who had bed linen as one of her only friends for the extended period of time, explained that blood flow alters and results in remarkable amounts of pain.
She continued: "But when you learn why the body compensates the way it does, it is actually very enlightening."
Nasa was established on July 29 1958 as a response to the Soviet space programme in Russia.
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