New Zealanders’ work will lift off into space

Press, 21 January 1987, Page 30

New Zealanders’ work will lift off into space

By

TOM BRIDGMAN

NZPA staff correspondent San Diego When the space shuttle Discovery lifts off in 1989 it will carry years of experimental work undertaken by three New Zealand medical scientists. In a cluttered laboratory in the department of medicine at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) at La Jolla, the three researchers are working on a long-term multi-million dollar project which is planned to be part of the Discovery space laboratory. Discovery is scheduled to head into space on December 7, 1989.

Dr Harry Guy, aged 48, Dr Don Stewart, aged 36, and Kim Prisk, aged 30, all of Christchurch, are studying the impact of gravity, and the lack of it, on the human lung.

The project is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which so far has spent SUS 3 million on the research, although the final cost may be nearer SUSS million. The study is being undertaken because if people are going to spend a long time in space, either working in space stations or on other missions, the effects of protracted weightlessness in zero-gravity needs to be known.

“The lung is actually a very easy organ to study because it is so simple,” said Dr Guy, the senior of the three and formerly a senior lecturer at the clinical school of medicine at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Christchurch. “It’s efficiency depends on how evenly air and blood is distributed in the lung. It is so well built that it has been found that the biggest cause of unevenness in lung function is gravity.” Dr Guy said researchers were interested in learning more about the mixing of air with

blood in the lung but this was hard to study because of the gravitational effects on Earth. The weightlessness of space is the ideal environment for the research.

“It is very valid to know as much as possible about the lung, and from a purely physiological point to study the lung you have to get rid of the effects of gravity.” Apart from the pure scientific study of the lung, there is the need to know about the effects of long periods of weightlessness on the human body. For instance the weightlessness of space has a detrimental effect on astronauts’ bone structure — it causes them to suffer from osteoporosis, the weakening of the bones which is found in elderly women, leaving them liable to hunching, sometimes known as “dowagers hump,” and susceptible to hip fractures. The researchers have been working out what happens when people are immersed in water for a long time — a form of weightlessness. That sees them dragging out a huge hot-tub, placing it in the middle of the laboratory and getting a colleague to sit in it. This inevitably brings rude comments about what a hard life some people have.

The research work does not only cover the effects of weightlessness on lungs — there is the associated study of what happens when astronauts breathe in any unwholesome gases or other substances that may be floating around inside a spacecraft. “A spacecraft is a closed environment —

any bad stuff in there will, as its first port of call, go into the lung,” said Dr Guy. “In a spacecraft, because there is no gravity you can inhale globs of gunk.

"There has been references to a ‘brown haze’ floating around in one, and that is not the best thing to inhale,” he says. “How does the lung behave when it inhales particles at zero-g? When you inhale does it stay down there or does it come right out again — we need to know that.”

They are developing an experiment in which harmless aerosol particles will be inhaled by astronauts in a weightless environment, and then will see if they are exhaled. “In space, particles that are inhaled could go further down into the lung, and that may be more harmful.”

From all of this, says Dr Guy, there will be a greater benefit to the mainstream body of people interested in lung study, rather than just the astronaut corps and those involved in space medicine.

“There will come a time when information about what happens at zero-g will change study on Earth.

Space research will be valuable in simulating unusual conditions on Earth — for example, the effects on people who have to spend a lot of time in bed.

“There are similarities between bed rest and lack of gravity,” he said.

“Extended bed rest has an effect on people — it’s bad for you. When someone has been in bed for a month, what happens when they get up?” Dr Guy, Dr Stewart and Dr Prisk are working under an internationally renowned Australian pulmonary physiologist, Dr John West.

The project has been in full swing since 1982, although Dr Guy joined Dr West in San Diego in 1981.

Dr Prisk arrived in November, 1983, just weeks after finishing his Ph.D at Christchurch. He was a scientific officer in

respiratory medicine at The Princess Margaret. “I got Kim because I knew that if I didn’t get him the work wouldn’t happen,” said Dr Guy.

Dr Stewart is a more recent arrival. He had taken Dr Guy’s place at The Princess Margaret and joined the others in the middle of last year for a form of sabbatical. He will return to Christchurch at the end of this year after doing another six months here and then six months in London at Brompton Hospital. Dr Guy said a “huge” amount of work was needed to get an experimental project ready to the stage where it could go into the space shuttle science laboratory. New Zealand researchers are well suited to doing this long-term work because of the way they had to work in their home land.

“In New Zealand if you are interested in research you know it is going to take years to do. You have to build your equipment, test it — do everything yourself. “We are probably more patient — or more stupid,” he laughs. “The ability to wield a screwdriver doesn’t go amiss either,” says Dr Prisk.

Dr Guy said Americans, on the other hand, were not so keen on long-term projects, wanting results faster and generally expecting to be able to buy

most equipment they might need off the shelf. “Any project that takes a long time they regard as a low-yield sort of thing,” he said.

Although the cost of the study they are doing is high, Dr Guy points out that half has gone on developing equipment for their laboratory and for use in space. “SUSI million went to the aerospace hardware contractor,” he said, “and a lot of the rest has gone in salaries and travel.” The Challenger shuttle disaster ■ last January set back their project which had . originally been scheduled to go into space last year. "The day it blew up there was a meeting about to take place to shift our launch date to December ’86,” said Dr Prisk. “They decided to watch the launch on television first — then there was no need for the meeting.” Dr Guy said that after the Challenger explosion N.A.S.A. had looked again at priorities and determined life sciences to be important, and also still backed sending people into space. “To plan a programme on the basis that there are not going to be accidents was unfortunate,” he said. “There are going to be accidents and more accidents. Anything worth doing is going to cost. “We need men in space to study man and N.A.S.A. is aware of that,” he said.