Fatesrider Ars Legatus Legionis
11y
21,506
Subscriptor

llanitedave said:
I hadn't thought about the space sickness angle. Yeah, NASA made the reasonable choice, but it does suck. And YES, Boeing is to blame here.
The quote in the article is pretty low key:

A non-trivial percentage of professional astronauts succumb to space sickness during the initial hours of their spaceflights.

The figure is 60-80% of all professional astronauts.

Non-trivial indeed.
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/02/29/space-travel-comes-motion-sickness-these-engineers-want-help

wagnerrp Ars Legatus Legionis
14y
26,915
Subscriptor
faffod said:
The question I have from the article, that I haven't seen an answer for is :

• Are experienced astronauts less susceptible to space sickness?

I assume that is the case, which would explain changing the pilot assignment, but if it is not then what does the change gain?

They probably take extra Dramamine.

butcherg Ars Centurion
11y
292
wagnerrp said:
They probably take extra Dramamine.

Sadly, I have some experience with this...

Zero-G and unfamiliar motion present two different causes for so-called 'motion sickness. Without gravity to provide a steady downward tug to internal organs, the feeling of them floating around in your body cavity is horrid, initially. This is in addition to the lack of weight on the fluids in the inner ear, which is a bit different than the stimulus provided by irregular motion. Same result, however, puke your guts out. While motion stimulus is usually short-lived, weightlessness is with you All The Freaking Time in space.

According to the Wikipedia page on space adaptation syndrome (nice term for it), they tend not to medicate it for newbies, the preference being to have them accommodate it over time. They do however use Dramamine dermal patches for spacewalks, because vomiting in a spacesuit is quite egregious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_adaptation_syndrome

I got motion-sick as a kid, probably a stupid idea to try pilot training. While there, however, got to push the stick over a few times to make stuff float around the cabin, horrid feeling the first time, but you could just stop pushing and it would go away, go figure. They did send me to 'sick school' at Brooks AFB, where they were doing research on the causes, came back with some tools that helped me get through T-37s. However, it really was just becoming familiar with the environment that did the trick. Moving to Colorado, flights to and from the Front Range were fraught with turbulent motion, again, got used to it over time. Worst feeling on an airplane ever was riding in a E/RC-135 during refueling as receiver, keeping the boom connected required maneuver that, in the rear of the airplane, felt absolutely horrible, worse than the zero-g stunts.

Spent 4 days on the USS LaSalle in the Med, flat-bottomed hull and worst-riding ship in 6th Fleet, collecting data from an exercise, staring at a screen all day in the TIC. Speed-ate Dramamine for the entire time, kept things down, but I was a nervous wreck for about a week after. So, medicating not such a great idea...

butcherg Ars Centurion
11y
292
alisonken1 said:
Every time my ship pulled out of port, I would be feeling really dragged for about a week (or until I puked), then I was fine the rest of the voyage.

Unfortunately, it happened every time we left port. Seems like my body reset itself whenever we hit dry land.

And Dramamine didn't help. BTW - I was a cruiser sailor (think Belknap-class CG's type).
I had a pattern too; typical training flight was to trundle over to the aux field, do some touch-and-goes, then climb up to the areas for aerobatic work. The place I'd get sick was on climb-out from the aux field, go figure. Got good at handling it, I'd ask the instructor to take the airplane, and in about 10 seconds pull out the bag, ralph into it, close and stow it, and take back the airplane. Didn't want to give 'em the idea it was a problem... :biggreen: