6 medical and space achievements that changed our lives
For several days now, the whole world has been saying that the Falcon 9 rocket sent SpaceX’s Dragon Crew to Elon Musk. And at the same time about the prospects that this opens up for the whole world. But many of the achievements of astronautics are already widely used on Earth in medicine and pharmacy.
1. Successful clinical trials
A person who is in a state of weightlessness does not need bone strength – there is no load on the skeleton. And since every organ that does not function atrophies, bone loss is intensively in orbit – 1.5% monthly. This state of the astronauts turned out to be an ideal model of rapidly progressing osteoporosis, so they became the group of volunteers who experienced the effects of denosumab. So, NASA defended astronauts and helped a pharmaceutical company bring to the market a drug that today saves older people from osteoporosis.
2.With a shuttle detail in the heart
The heart is a pump that pumps blood. If it fails, why not replace it with an artificial one? This idea brought together the cardiac surgeon Michael Debeika and engineers of the Lyndon Johnson Space Center. As a prototype, they used the shuttle’s main fuel pump designs and created a MicroMed-DeBakey VAD ventricle, connected to the heart of a sick person, weighing about 100 g. With a reduced spacecraft part in the chest, people can live more or less normal, rather than lie in the hospital waiting for a heart transplant. The only inconvenience: you have to carry a controller with batteries for 6-8 hours.
3. Star braces-systems
Initially, dentists used unaesthetic metal braces to align the dentition. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and NASA have developed transparent polycrystalline alumina for space and rocket science. This material turned out to be very durable, thermally resistant, light. From it was possible to obtain structures of any shape. In 1987, transparent dental braces first appeared on the world market, and now they are produced by a variety of companies. So military space technology has returned the beauty of a smile to millions of people.
4. Unique blood glucose meter
In 2016, Marek Nowak, a 22-year-old student of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Prague Technical University ČVUT, became one of the five winners of the International Space Conference in Guadalajara (Mexico). Combining aerospace technology and medicine, he introduced a unique glucometer. This device looks like a credit card and is recharged from a mobile phone, and works on the basis of wireless energy transfer using microwaves – this technology is used in solar power plants located in space. Marek Nowak suggests using it on Earth: he founded the startup X.GLU in the Czech Republic, which will produce glucometers.
5. Antibiotics against bacteria in orbit
At the end of 2017, NASA sent into space the antimicrobial satellite EcAMSat, which will deliver bacterial samples to the ISS. The purpose of a scientific experiment is to find out how antibacterial drugs can resist bacteria in unearthly conditions. The fact is that cosmic weightlessness has a stressful effect on E. coli and other bacteria. As a result, their protective system changes, which affects the effect of antibiotics. By determining which factors of pathogenic bacteria are responsible for antibiotic resistance under zero gravity, it will be possible to increase the effectiveness of antibiotics on Earth.
6. Hospital in space
In February, Dubai hosted the Arab Health 2018 exhibition, which announced that the UAE plans to build a hospital in space for the needs of astronauts. The sensational project unveiled by the Ministry of Health. The authors of the initiative acknowledge that the creation of a hospital is a matter of the distant future, it will appear only in 2117. However, it is important for them to announce to partners about the beginning of the path to the implementation of the project and begin to develop technologies for it right now. We remind those who do not believe in science fiction: it was in the UAE that they came up with the idea of creating artificial islands, turning them into paradises for the rich and did it.
Source: mister-blister.com
