The administration needs to make decisions regarding the future of NASA

This is what astronaut Garrett Reisman says in response to a question from the science website at a press conference held at the Fisher Institute at the Ilan Ramon Space Conference. Smith Johnson, chief of the medical branch at the Johnson Space Center in Houston responsible for astronaut health, says that space medicine has benefited conventional medicine.

NASA is at the crossroads of decision-making, but in any case, these are decisions left by the outgoing administration to the decision of the incoming administration. This is what astronaut Garrett Reisman says, in response to a question from the science website at a press conference held yesterday (Wednesday) at the Air Force Base during the fourth annual Col. Ilan Ramon International Space Conference, organized by the Fisher Institute and the Ministry of Science. The question was raised following the retirement of NASA Director Michael Griffin about two weeks ago, and the appointment of Chris Super Schools as interim director Due to differences of opinion on the priorities of the new administration.

According to Raisman, the administration must make a decision for example until when NASA will continue to fly the space shuttles (meaning whether 2010 is indeed the final retirement date AB). The second decision is to what extent we will continue to support the space station and also what is the right route to find a replacement for the shuttles. The administration knows that it is supposed to make decisions on these issues and its people are working on it. They have a lot of other issues on the agenda but they know it is required. It won't take long until we have a new manager and answers to all the issues here. I believe, however, that the basic strategic direction will not change.

The director of the Israel Space Agency, Zvi Kaplan, who was also present at the press conference, said in response: "I believe that the US's commitment to space is independent of the government. We will see changes in nuances and not mainly. One of the reasons for this is that the space race is international. We saw the launch of the Indian Chandrayaan a few months ago, the Chinese went in space and I don't think the US government will let space be controlled by East Asians, even

Europe, because of the mechanism of the United Agency, can today carry out large missions and maybe even a manned mission, and India will launch a manned mission. In my opinion, in the end there will be an increase in the budget because the new administration has a tendency to increase research on environmental issues. And observation from space is important in this field.

What will happen to the space station during cuts?

"It's not as expensive as you think. The perception in the public is as if these tasks cost a large percentage of GDP. This is a total of half a percent of the government's budget, half a cent for every tax payer's dollar. And we manage to do a lot of interesting tasks with this money. In this perspective, if you eliminate everything that NASA does and split this half cent into other areas, they won't feel it."

Raisman, who stayed at the space station for about three months at the beginning of 2008, was asked what the next mission he would fly to and he replied: "First of all, I just came back and there are operations to get back to normal. Part of my job is to go to the community and share my impressions. This is also what Ilan thought of doing. The loss of Ilan is a loss on several levels - both personally and nationally. When you do events like these, which last a whole week, and reach schools. For example, we opened a center in a school in Ramat Gan, an event like this that increases the interest in science in the community, this is a continuation of Ilan's mission. He cannot do this, and we take it upon ourselves."

Today I am waiting to hear from NASA what the next mission will be. There are still several unmanned shuttle missions. I hope to be on one of these missions. I didn't break anything precious in the space and they were happy with me. If I accept this mission it will be a return to the International Space Station.”

Another participant in the press conference is Dr. Smith Johnson, head of the medical branch at NASA responsible for the occupational health of all NASA astronauts - active and retired, who was asked to what extent the human experience in space medicine will help conventional medicine: "The estimates are that every dollar Spent you get $9 back. Life sciences and medicine. We have the best technology that you can put in the most remote and isolated place with limited ability to provide medical service and this pushes the need to develop good and tiny scanning tools, capable of functioning in space conditions. This will have an impact on medicine in general. The scanning methods have also been perfected, and medicine can be performed remotely."

One of the most expected questions that Johnson was asked was whether it would not be more worthwhile to carry out robotic flights instead of endangering humans and his answer was: "You need both. You solve the radiation problem if you don't send humans. The data accumulated in recent years found that it is possible that the risk from a solar flare in low orbit around the earth is not as dangerous as we thought, but we need to live on the space station and get to the moon and examine what kind of protection should be built there. And it is also necessary to determine the genetic profile of the people who will fly."

Space medicine is mainly preventive medicine

In his lecture, Johnson talked about his role in maintaining the health of astronauts in conditions of lack of gravity."

"We took the healthiest people in the world and put them in the most hostile environment - the moon. In all space missions so far, there have been doctors who examined the astronauts during training, and supervise them during the mission in space in private conversations on health issues held by team members with the doctor in the control room. By the way, the astronauts perform EKG tests in preparation for spacewalks. Before the launch we also make sure to change their biological clock so that they sleep from 12 to 9 in the evening and on the day of the launch they are already ready for the station's clock (Moscow time).

A doctor even flew on the Skylab space station for the first time. So we saw, for example, that in space it is impossible to mix medicines, so you have to mix them on Earth. It is also very difficult to administer fluids in space conditions (and dehydration is a common occurrence in these conditions). We have also learned a lot in these years about the problems arising from radiation as well as the most difficult problem in space - loss of calcium at incredible rates.

Space medicine is first and foremost preventive medicine, so that the astronauts can be healthy and active for at least 15 years. Second - we try to stop diseases, or at least identify them in time. In all history there have been three evacuations from space stations, but there have been many calls for help. Evacuation from the space station takes 24 hours, from the moon seven days and from Mars a year, so we will have to increase the capacity of treatment using robotics and remote medicine, even if it is necessary to analyze a pandocyte.

I am also in contact with my colleagues from Russia, Japan and Europe and in many cases we make decisions together.

Among other things, in the routine tests, we check the level of calcium in the arteries that come out of the heart, and if there is too much, we are not allowed to fly. The astronauts are trained how to treat the illnesses of other astronauts in space. Many hours of training are dedicated to this, we also train them in zero gravity in planes designed for this. They also train underwater, in virtual reality laboratories, and not only in the US but also in Russia. We also know their families. For every astronaut who goes into space, there are 100-200 workers in the control center.

In addition to the doctors who are at the Johnson Space Center and accompany the astronauts until launch at the Kennedy Space Center, the Kennedy Space Center has a medical team waiting in case of rescue, similar teams are also waiting at the shuttle emergency landing sites in France and Spain.

In conclusion, Johnson said that the main problems in space are calcium loss in the bones, motion sickness, heart problems, back pain due to the lengthening of the back muscles, as well as kidney stones. The space medicine branch is also responsible for monitoring the air on the space station to detect toxins. Too much toxins and waste will cause the need to abandon the station. The branch also deals with psychological treatment of astronauts and their families.

Fun on the space station

Dr. Garrett Reisman, astronaut - was a member of Ilan Ramon's course and after the disaster he served as an astronaut helping the family on behalf of NASA at his request.

Reisman told about his part in the 16th and 17th crews of the International Space Station. We launched mission STS-123 a night flight, for a few minutes the night turned into day. The noise and vibrations are not much different from a roller coaster, but the main problem is the gravity - 3 times the normal gravity and it lasts for long minutes. It seems to us as if we are rushing somewhere. And suddenly it stops and suddenly becomes zero gravity, then we try to stop ourselves and many times find ourselves pushing our hands in front of the body to avoid injury from the forward movement, which does not exist at all.

After describing his role in that mission, Performing a spacewalk to assemble Dexter – A robot designed to do part of the spacewalk operations outside the station. Dexter came in nine pieces and we had to assemble him - when complete he will be 25 feet tall. There is nothing to worry about him taking over the space station and disconnecting, for example, the power cables or other cables from the outside. The reason - he has no brain. We also brought the first component of the Japanese space component Kibu. We control it from a panel at the station, and look at the monitors as a hand to see it on the cameras and check if it moves as we asked it to.

In the first month, the mission commander was Peggy Whitson, and the flight engineer was Yuri Melanchenko. Yuri and I imprisoned Peggy and we had demands to release her - reverse the direction of the flight and pizza. Of course, NASA could not allow this. Later we explained to them that it was an April 1 prank but for five minutes the control center referred to me as Commander Reisman.

We had nine spacecraft dockings and departures from the station in 95 days. The Jules Verne European spacecraft, which also contained one of Verne's handwritten letters. The problem is that it was written in French and the French astronaut had just left.. We also had visits from Russian cargo spaceships that brought clothes, food, water, air, and they also take our waste and burn up in the atmosphere. And of course we had a Soyuz spacecraft. In this spaceship was a Korean astronaut and substitutes for Peggy and Yuri. One of them was Sergey Volkov, the world's first cosmonaut who is also a second generation spaceman. Peggy and Yuri left and then had a problem getting home - Ballistic landing. They were actually very lucky because they almost burned up on entry but the spaceship was strong and held up even when they entered in the wrong direction.

In conclusion, Reisman recounts his experience as the first Jew on the space station: "I was the first Jewish crew member on the International Space Station. To mark the occasion I brought a mezuzah and placed it in my sleeping station - the size of a closet. I also brought a number of items that Rona Ramon brought me from Israel - a copy of the Declaration of Independence as well as the President's Miracle and yesterday I went up with Rona Ramon to meet Peres and brought him the miracle. By the way, the other Jew was Greg Chaimtoff who replaced me."

First article in the series. Later this week we will bring more experiences from the conference.