9 ms·

Space Radiation Devastated the Lives of Apollo Astronaut

53 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

jakozaur 10y ago
Extremely small data set, just 24 ppl were outside of low-orbit. There are tons of other correlations that can add to it. E.g. astronauts are hand picked group that often gone through years of specialized training. Edit: There are different subgroups in the article, all of them are small. I mentioned "Deep space refers to the frontier beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere and atmosphere where only 24 humans in history—all Apollo astronauts, have ever travelled."
- JorgeGT 10y ago
  I agree on the first part, but concerning the second note that the control groups were other astronauts, not only the general population: > The rate among astronauts who never flew is 9%. Among low-Earth orbiting astronauts, its 11%. For the men who travelled to the Moon, a staggering 43%
  - jakozaur 10y ago
    43% out of 7 astronauts who landed on moon is just 3 astronauts who got cardiovascular disease.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      12 men walked on the Moon and 24 total reached lunar orbit.
      - jakozaur 10y ago
        The study mentions 7. Probably other died before and were excluded from the sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts#Apollo_astronauts_who_walked_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts#Apol... E.g. Pete died from motorcycle accident at age 69: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad
- avian 10y ago
  From the original paper: > The group of all flight astronauts was comprised of 5 females and 37 males, of which the LEO astronaut subgroup contained 5 females and 30 males and the Apollo lunar astronaut subgroup was comprised of 7 males. The non-flight astronauts consisted of 3 females and 32 males. If I understand this correctly, the data set for Apollo astronauts was even smaller - just 7 people.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Precisely. I strongly suspect it's a case of this: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/
lordnacho 10y ago
How did they conclude it was both significant and caused by radiation? 24 people from a similar background and age is less than 24 people. I suppose the incident radiation must have been orders of magnitude above what ordinary people get here on the ground, or a few days in space would not amount to much.
- bhaak 10y ago
  > How did they conclude it was both significant and caused by radiation? 24 people from a similar background and age is less than 24 people. Quote from the abstract: > To test a possible mechanistic basis for these findings, a secondary purpose was to determine the long-term effects of simulated weightlessness and space-relevant total-body irradiation on vascular responsiveness in mice. The results demonstrate that space-relevant irradiation induces a sustained vascular endothelial cell dysfunction. Such impairment is known to lead to occlusive artery disease, and may be an important risk factor for CVD among astronauts exposed to deep space radiation. They didn't just do some poor statistics with a low sample size. So, their findings suggests that low gravity for a 6 month period doesn't affect the health of the mice but the radiation does. Not far off what we already suspected but with a small twist (cancer was probably considered a bigger risk than CVD).
erikb 10y ago
I think "you are the first guys on the moon, but you may die 10 years earlier than you may otherwise" is part of what the Astronauts have signed up for. "Devastating lives" would be having ALS or bone cancer killing you over the period of 10 years starting when you are 35.
rubayeet 10y ago
Yet another example of how findings of scientific studies are misrepresented in the media and worded to sound frightening/interesting. Read the article on Ars Technica on the same topic [link below] which gave it slightly better treatment IMO http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/apollo-astronauts-dying-of-heart-disease-at-4-5x-the-rate-of-counterparts/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/apollo-astronauts-dyi...
jlebrech 10y ago
or maybe it's emotional eating that caused it?
amelius 10y ago
I'm curious if only the cardiovascular system is affected. And if so, why? What does radiation do to the brain, or the endocrine system, for example?
- _nalply 10y ago
  I am not sure whether I understood it correctly, but the secondary radiation (when a high energy particle hits the shielding, a shower of secondary particles rains on the unfortunate passenger) seems to physically hurt parts of the body. Similar to boiling small random volumes inside the body. And the aortic arch seems to be very sensitive to such lesions.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    Right. That's why you want to use low atomic weight shielding like paraffin or water when you're worried about charged particle radiation.
ackfoo 10y ago
What you need to understand about this study is that radiation poses a particular risk to structural tissues. A structural tissue is anything where function is dictated by form, such as the cardiovascular system or the nervous system (whose function is largely dependent upon the physical layout of the connections between neurons). Tissues such as the spleen and the lungs are not considered structural because, while they certainly have a physical configuration that is important, their function is distributed identically, or nearly identically, throughout their structure. If radiation affects one part of a non-structural tissue, it's function is relatively easily transferred to another area. This is not true of the cardiovascular system; the function of the aorta, for example, cannot be accomplished by a capillary in the leg. Radiation beyond the magnetosphere can be understood as mainly a point injury. When the highly-accelerated nucleus of a heavy element, for example, passes through a tissue, it causes local tissue damage. This is more important when the tissue is structural, and even more important when that tissue has a limited capacity for repair. The Apollo astronauts were only beyond the magnetosphere for two weeks or less. Travel to Mars, or habitation on the moon, will both require far greater radiation exposures. Shielding from highly-accelerated nuclei is currently impossible because they create secondary radiation in any shielding material that is far worse than the original problem. Long-duration human space flight beyond the magnetosphere is therefore impossible with current technology, despite the hype. We must develop either strong magnetic shielding or genetic modifications to improve radiation resistance before traveling to Mars, otherwise we will arrive with impaired cognition and other infirmities. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
- ch 10y ago
  So, ignoring the ethical issues, would there actually be some benefit to space travel if, say over the next couple millennia, there was a deliberate gradual increasing of the background radiation levels on earth? Would that lead to human adaptations that could survive in more radiation hostile environments?
  - corecoder 10y ago
    Adaptations in a couple millennia? I doubt it. I don't think there's much a living being can do to become more resistant to radiations; the most effective trick seems to be being small.
perseusprime11 10y ago
How do we know this is related to space radiation and not gravity?
- _nalply 10y ago
  Perhaps by comparing to the population on ISS because the space station is still at least partially protected by Earth's magnetic field?
  - perseusprime11 10y ago
    I kind of feel like we don't fully understand gravity which may be causing these problems. The space suits are pretty robust. Are we now saying that the space suits we send our astronauts in are not up to mark and cannot protect them from space radiation?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Yes, there is insufficient protection from radiation in the suits and in other spacecraft.
      - _nalply 10y ago
        Especially deep space radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field.
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      Space suits can't protect from radiation. No material that thin can.
kabdib 10y ago
Very, very small data set. I have doubts that you can draw conclusions from it without further controls (e.g., exposure to radiation versus zero-G versus the strenuous training versus the damned Tang. Well, probably not the Tang).
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The LEO astronauts had relatively more exposure to low G than to radiation, so they did have a fairly effective control for that exposure. Same with the training. Non flight astronauts (and the LEO group) had much lower mortality due to cardiovascular disease than the general population. Apollo group was noticeably higher. I guess the guys who went to the moon could have trained that much more than other astronauts, but they would have decent information about that.
narrator 10y ago
The molecule c60, a.k.a Buckminsterfullerium, has shown to have powerful anti-radiation effects(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272). It can absorb ionizing radiation without degrading. They tried to kill mice by feeding them it, but they lived twice as long (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298). Unfortunately, this result is so bizarre that nobody will ever believe it. NASA and SpaceX won't ever figure this out though. They will fund some sort of initiative that will waste billions and give lots of researchers jobs for years. It will test billions of small molecules and find something that improves tolerance to radiation by .1% but has toxic side effects. Edit: Gave medical study citations for both claims and got down votes? There are actually a lot of surprising results in medical literature that are ignored because there's not a lot of money in them and they were discovered with so little effort. The conventional wisdom is: if it didn't cost a billion dollars to develop, it couldn't possibly work.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  The potential anti-aging effects of c60 are interesting but there's no reason to believe it can help with radiation. Lots of things can absorb radiation without degrading, that doesn't mean that eating them will transfer their powers to you.
  - narrator 10y ago
    This is a really phenomenal mouse study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 It's so bizarre that it won't get followed up. I spend a lot of time digging in pubmed and when I find stuff like this, nobody cares. It's too cheap of a solution and not patentable. It will be forgotten because 95% of people will scoff at the result. It's simply too miraculous to be believed.
    - Symmetry 10y ago
      If that was just a single result I'd scoff too but it was following up on some earlier indications of the same thing so I agree it needs to be investigated more. Still, it appears to be entirely unrelated to radiation tolerance.
kraemate 10y ago
What about the relative lifespans of the astronauts? The ones selected to go to the moon were probably older, fitter, and more experienced when they made the trip. Did they outlive the other astronauts and the general population? Since mortality due to heart disease increases with age, did the moon astronauts just live longer?
- kraemate 10y ago
  Infact, Table-1 in the paper confirms this. The astronauts that went to the moon lived significantly longer (65 compared to 56 years).
mite-mitreski 10y ago
Doesn't anyone knows basics of statistics 40 people is not a sample, how is this even a news ?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Epidemiologists tend to be quite familiar with statistics. They prefer it to counting.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
Can someone explain the aluminum link? Is the concern due to secondary radiation?

53 points by jackgavigan 10y ago

Extremely small data set, just 24 ppl were outside of low-orbit. There are tons of other correlations that can add to it. E.g. astronauts are hand picked group that often gone through years of specialized training. Edit: There are different subgroups in the article, all of them are small. I mentioned "Deep space refers to the frontier beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere and atmosphere where only 24 humans in history—all Apollo astronauts, have ever travelled."

JorgeGT 10y ago
I agree on the first part, but concerning the second note that the control groups were other astronauts, not only the general population: > The rate among astronauts who never flew is 9%. Among low-Earth orbiting astronauts, its 11%. For the men who travelled to the Moon, a staggering 43%
- jakozaur 10y ago
  43% out of 7 astronauts who landed on moon is just 3 astronauts who got cardiovascular disease.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    12 men walked on the Moon and 24 total reached lunar orbit.
    - jakozaur 10y ago
      The study mentions 7. Probably other died before and were excluded from the sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts#Apollo_astronauts_who_walked_on_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts#Apol... E.g. Pete died from motorcycle accident at age 69: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Conrad
avian 10y ago
From the original paper: > The group of all flight astronauts was comprised of 5 females and 37 males, of which the LEO astronaut subgroup contained 5 females and 30 males and the Apollo lunar astronaut subgroup was comprised of 7 males. The non-flight astronauts consisted of 3 females and 32 males. If I understand this correctly, the data set for Apollo astronauts was even smaller - just 7 people.
ceejayoz 10y ago
Precisely. I strongly suspect it's a case of this: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/

lordnacho 10y ago

How did they conclude it was both significant and caused by radiation? 24 people from a similar background and age is less than 24 people. I suppose the incident radiation must have been orders of magnitude above what ordinary people get here on the ground, or a few days in space would not amount to much.

bhaak 10y ago
> How did they conclude it was both significant and caused by radiation? 24 people from a similar background and age is less than 24 people. Quote from the abstract: > To test a possible mechanistic basis for these findings, a secondary purpose was to determine the long-term effects of simulated weightlessness and space-relevant total-body irradiation on vascular responsiveness in mice. The results demonstrate that space-relevant irradiation induces a sustained vascular endothelial cell dysfunction. Such impairment is known to lead to occlusive artery disease, and may be an important risk factor for CVD among astronauts exposed to deep space radiation. They didn't just do some poor statistics with a low sample size. So, their findings suggests that low gravity for a 6 month period doesn't affect the health of the mice but the radiation does. Not far off what we already suspected but with a small twist (cancer was probably considered a bigger risk than CVD).

erikb 10y ago

I think "you are the first guys on the moon, but you may die 10 years earlier than you may otherwise" is part of what the Astronauts have signed up for. "Devastating lives" would be having ALS or bone cancer killing you over the period of 10 years starting when you are 35.

rubayeet 10y ago

Yet another example of how findings of scientific studies are misrepresented in the media and worded to sound frightening/interesting. Read the article on Ars Technica on the same topic [link below] which gave it slightly better treatment IMO http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/apollo-astronauts-dying-of-heart-disease-at-4-5x-the-rate-of-counterparts/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/apollo-astronauts-dyi...

jlebrech 10y ago

or maybe it's emotional eating that caused it?

amelius 10y ago

I'm curious if only the cardiovascular system is affected. And if so, why? What does radiation do to the brain, or the endocrine system, for example?

_nalply 10y ago
I am not sure whether I understood it correctly, but the secondary radiation (when a high energy particle hits the shielding, a shower of secondary particles rains on the unfortunate passenger) seems to physically hurt parts of the body. Similar to boiling small random volumes inside the body. And the aortic arch seems to be very sensitive to such lesions.
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Right. That's why you want to use low atomic weight shielding like paraffin or water when you're worried about charged particle radiation.

ackfoo 10y ago

What you need to understand about this study is that radiation poses a particular risk to structural tissues. A structural tissue is anything where function is dictated by form, such as the cardiovascular system or the nervous system (whose function is largely dependent upon the physical layout of the connections between neurons). Tissues such as the spleen and the lungs are not considered structural because, while they certainly have a physical configuration that is important, their function is distributed identically, or nearly identically, throughout their structure. If radiation affects one part of a non-structural tissue, it's function is relatively easily transferred to another area. This is not true of the cardiovascular system; the function of the aorta, for example, cannot be accomplished by a capillary in the leg. Radiation beyond the magnetosphere can be understood as mainly a point injury. When the highly-accelerated nucleus of a heavy element, for example, passes through a tissue, it causes local tissue damage. This is more important when the tissue is structural, and even more important when that tissue has a limited capacity for repair. The Apollo astronauts were only beyond the magnetosphere for two weeks or less. Travel to Mars, or habitation on the moon, will both require far greater radiation exposures. Shielding from highly-accelerated nuclei is currently impossible because they create secondary radiation in any shielding material that is far worse than the original problem. Long-duration human space flight beyond the magnetosphere is therefore impossible with current technology, despite the hype. We must develop either strong magnetic shielding or genetic modifications to improve radiation resistance before traveling to Mars, otherwise we will arrive with impaired cognition and other infirmities. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

ch 10y ago
So, ignoring the ethical issues, would there actually be some benefit to space travel if, say over the next couple millennia, there was a deliberate gradual increasing of the background radiation levels on earth? Would that lead to human adaptations that could survive in more radiation hostile environments?
- corecoder 10y ago
  Adaptations in a couple millennia? I doubt it. I don't think there's much a living being can do to become more resistant to radiations; the most effective trick seems to be being small.

perseusprime11 10y ago

How do we know this is related to space radiation and not gravity?

_nalply 10y ago
Perhaps by comparing to the population on ISS because the space station is still at least partially protected by Earth's magnetic field?
- perseusprime11 10y ago
  I kind of feel like we don't fully understand gravity which may be causing these problems. The space suits are pretty robust. Are we now saying that the space suits we send our astronauts in are not up to mark and cannot protect them from space radiation?
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Yes, there is insufficient protection from radiation in the suits and in other spacecraft.
    - _nalply 10y ago
      Especially deep space radiation outside the Earth's magnetic field.
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    Space suits can't protect from radiation. No material that thin can.

kabdib 10y ago

Very, very small data set. I have doubts that you can draw conclusions from it without further controls (e.g., exposure to radiation versus zero-G versus the strenuous training versus the damned Tang. Well, probably not the Tang).

maxerickson 10y ago
The LEO astronauts had relatively more exposure to low G than to radiation, so they did have a fairly effective control for that exposure. Same with the training. Non flight astronauts (and the LEO group) had much lower mortality due to cardiovascular disease than the general population. Apollo group was noticeably higher. I guess the guys who went to the moon could have trained that much more than other astronauts, but they would have decent information about that.

narrator 10y ago

The molecule c60, a.k.a Buckminsterfullerium, has shown to have powerful anti-radiation effects(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272). It can absorb ionizing radiation without degrading. They tried to kill mice by feeding them it, but they lived twice as long (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22498298). Unfortunately, this result is so bizarre that nobody will ever believe it. NASA and SpaceX won't ever figure this out though. They will fund some sort of initiative that will waste billions and give lots of researchers jobs for years. It will test billions of small molecules and find something that improves tolerance to radiation by .1% but has toxic side effects. Edit: Gave medical study citations for both claims and got down votes? There are actually a lot of surprising results in medical literature that are ignored because there's not a lot of money in them and they were discovered with so little effort. The conventional wisdom is: if it didn't cost a billion dollars to develop, it couldn't possibly work.

Symmetry 10y ago
The potential anti-aging effects of c60 are interesting but there's no reason to believe it can help with radiation. Lots of things can absorb radiation without degrading, that doesn't mean that eating them will transfer their powers to you.
- narrator 10y ago
  This is a really phenomenal mouse study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19914272 It's so bizarre that it won't get followed up. I spend a lot of time digging in pubmed and when I find stuff like this, nobody cares. It's too cheap of a solution and not patentable. It will be forgotten because 95% of people will scoff at the result. It's simply too miraculous to be believed.
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    If that was just a single result I'd scoff too but it was following up on some earlier indications of the same thing so I agree it needs to be investigated more. Still, it appears to be entirely unrelated to radiation tolerance.

kraemate 10y ago

What about the relative lifespans of the astronauts? The ones selected to go to the moon were probably older, fitter, and more experienced when they made the trip. Did they outlive the other astronauts and the general population? Since mortality due to heart disease increases with age, did the moon astronauts just live longer?

kraemate 10y ago
Infact, Table-1 in the paper confirms this. The astronauts that went to the moon lived significantly longer (65 compared to 56 years).

mite-mitreski 10y ago

Doesn't anyone knows basics of statistics 40 people is not a sample, how is this even a news ?

maxerickson 10y ago
Epidemiologists tend to be quite familiar with statistics. They prefer it to counting.

pavel_lishin 10y ago

Can someone explain the aluminum link? Is the concern due to secondary radiation?