Eric Ingram typically moves through the world on his wheelchair.
The 31-year-old CEO of SCOUT Inc., a smart satellite components company, was
born with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a rare condition that affects his joints
and blocked him from his dream of becoming an astronaut. He applied and was
rejected, twice.
اضافة اعلان
But onboard a special airplane flight this week, he spun
effortlessly through the air, touching nothing. Moving around, he found, was
easier in the simulated zero-gravity environment where he needed so few tools
to help.
While simulating lunar gravity on the flight — which is about
one-sixth of Earth’s — he discovered something even more surprising: for the
first time in his life, he could stand up.
“It was legitimately weird,” he said. “Just the act of standing
was probably almost as alien to me as floating in zero gravity.”
He was one of 12 disabled passengers who swam through the air
aboard a parabolic flight in Southern California on Oct. 17 in an experiment
testing how people with disabilities fare in a zero-gravity environment.
Parabolic flights, which fly within Earth’s atmosphere in alternating arcs,
allow passengers to experience zero gravity on the upward arcs for repeated
short bursts, and are a regular part of training for astronauts.
The flight was organized by AstroAccess, a nonprofit initiative
that aims to make spaceflight accessible to all. Although about 600 people have
been to space since the beginning of human spaceflight in the 1960s, NASA and
other space agencies have long restricted the job of astronaut to a minuscule
slice of humanity. The U.S. agency initially only selected white, physically
fit men to be astronauts and even when the agency broadened its criteria, it
still only chose people that met certain physical requirements.
This blocked the path to space for many with disabilities,
overlooking arguments that disabled people could make excellent astronauts in
some cases.
But the rise of private spaceflight, funded by billionaires with
the support of government space agencies, is creating the possibility of
allowing a much wider and more diverse pool of people to make trips to the edge
of space and beyond. And those with disabilities are aiming to be included.
The participants in the AstroAccess flight argue that
accessibility issues must be considered now — at the advent of private space
travel — rather than later, because retrofitting equipment to be accessible
would take more time and money.
The Federal Aviation Administration is prohibited from creating
safety regulations for private spaceflights until October 2023. Initiatives
like AstroAccess are aiming to guide the way that government agencies think
about accessibility on spaceflights.
“It’s crucial that we’re able to get out ahead of that
regulatory process and prevent misinformation or lack of information or lack of
data from making bad regulation that would prevent someone with disability
flying on one of these trips,” Ingram said.
The group also hopes that making everything accessible from the
get-go could lead to new space innovations that are helpful for everyone,
regardless of disability.
For example, Sawyer Rosenstein, another AstroAccess passenger,
is quick to point out how the lightweight metal alloys used in his wheelchair
are a byproduct of NASA innovations. Rosenstein, 27, has been paralyzed from
the waist down since an injury in middle school.
Barred from space itself, Rosenstein became a journalist who
often reports on space, including for a podcast, Talking Space.
During the AstroAccess flight, Rosenstein wore a specially
modified flight suit with a strap he could grab to bend his knees and maneuver
his legs.
“I was in control of myself and my whole body,” Rosenstein said.
“It’s almost indescribable to have that freedom after having it taken away for
so long.”
He also found he was more flexible in zero gravity, where he
could finally test his full range of motion. And the chronic pain he usually
experiences throughout his body disappeared during the flight, he said. Like
Ingram, he also could stand up on his own. They both suggested that their
experiences signal that zero gravity or reduced gravity could have potential
therapeutic applications.
With just a few modifications for each type of disability, Ann
Kapusta, AstroAccess’ mission and communications director, said the dozen
participants in the flight had a roughly 90% success rate getting back to their
seats after 15 tests — 12 in zero gravity, two that mimicked lunar gravity and
one that mimicked Martian gravity.
AstroAccess conducted these tests — each lasting 20 to 30
seconds — to ensure that people with disabilities can go on a suborbital
flight, like the one Jeff Bezos took, and safely get into their seats in the
limited time before reentry. This is typical training for suborbital flights,
but not for orbital flights, which don’t have the same time crunch before
reentry.
The relative ease of the flight surprised some on the team,
including Tim Bailey, the executive director of Yuri’s Night, a nonprofit
organization focused on space education that sponsors AstroAccess. At first, he
said he was concerned that people with disabilities were more fragile and would
require extra medical precautions.
“My biggest takeaway from this is my initial reaction of, ‘Oh,
my goodness, this is going to be hard,’ was wrong,” he said. “They didn’t need
a lot of extra stuff.”
In addition to modified spacesuits for mobility impaired
passengers, researchers tested special lighting systems for deaf passengers and
Braille and navigational devices for blind passengers.
To navigate the plane as a blind person, Mona Minkara, 33,
tested an ultrasonic device and a haptic, or vibrating, device, both of which
signaled her as she approached the plane’s walls and other objects. But the
most helpful device, she said, was the simplest: an extendible cane.
“What was surprising to me is at some points, I knew exactly
where I was and how I was facing,” she said.
Minkara, a bioengineer at Northeastern University in Boston,
pointed out that making spacecraft navigable for blind people would also help
keep other astronauts safe if the lights go out during a spacecraft emergency.
Some on the Oct. 17 flight once dreamed of becoming professional
astronauts, and hope this research could open the door for other disabled
people to get the job.
The European Space Agency announced this year that it is
accepting astronaut applications from those with leg amputations or who are
especially short, and hopes to expand to include more types of disabilities in
the future. Courtney Beasley, a spokesperson for NASA, said the U.S. agency is
not currently considering changing its selection criteria.
Blue Origin, the company owned by Bezos, the founder of Amazon,
said in a statement that passengers must meet its own list of functional
requirements that may exclude blind, deaf or mobility-impaired individuals from
flying.
Apurva Varia, 48, is deaf and one of the people who would
continue to be excluded by such rules.
“Space organizations told us that we can’t go to space, but why?
Show me proof,” he said.
In ninth grade, Varia recalls watching a space shuttle launch on
TV. The channel didn’t have closed captions, so Varia didn’t understand what
the shuttle was, or why people were sitting inside wearing orange suits. When
the countdown hit zero, he said he was amazed to see it blast into the sky and disappear.
Soon afterward, Varia wrote a letter to NASA asking if he could
apply to be an astronaut. He got a reply saying that NASA couldn’t accept deaf
astronauts at the time.
Varia went on to earn advanced engineering degrees and has
worked for NASA for two decades to direct space missions and help design
propulsion systems for satellites.
On the Oct. 17 flight, he got a little closer to his dream. He
found himself bumping into the walls and ceilings as he tried to sign in
American Sign Language and attempted drinking a big, floating bubble of water,
which splashed on his face.
“It was an out-of-this-world experience,” he said. “I hope to go
to space someday.”
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