Do You Have the Right Stuff to Be a NASA Pillownaut? | Wired Science | Wired.com

Do You Have the Right Stuff to Be a NASA Pillownaut? | Wired Science | Wired.com

NASA will pay you $160 per day to lie in bed — Now, the scientists at NASA’s Human Test Subject Facility in Galveston, Texas, are trying a new type of bed rest to simulate the moon’s gravitational field. They put you, face up, on a bed tilted up at exactly 9.5 degrees with your feet planted on a panel. Do the trigonometry, and the experiment places just about the same amount of gravity on your feet as the moon would.

“Obviously, there’s no magic switch to turn off gravity,” said Ronita Cromwell, senior research scientist heading up the project. “What we’re doing is removing some of the effects of 1 G and achieving one-sixth G along the long axis of the body.”

The feasibility studies for the lunar analog study only require six days in bed. If the test subjects can handle it, which they appear to be doing, it will be extended to much longer periods of time. It’s a novel analog, though, so the team is taking it slow

“Not many people have done it before, and no one has done it in the way that we’re doing it,” Cromwell said.