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Mars Science

What Happens When You Have a Heart Attack on the Way To Mars? (wired.co.uk) 70

If your heart stops en route to Mars, rest assured that researchers have considered how to carry out CPR in space. (One option is to plant your feet on the ceiling and extend your arms downwards to compress the patient's chest.) From a report: Astronauts, because of their age range and high physical fitness, are unlikely to suffer a stroke or have their appendix suddenly explode. That's good because, if it does happen, they're in the realm of what Jonathan Scott -- head of the medical projects and technology team at the European Space Agency -- describes as 'treatment futility.' In other words: there's nothing anyone can do about it. On the ISS, when medical incidents arise, astronauts can draw on the combined expertise of a host of medical experts at Nasa. "The patient is on the space station, the doctor is on the ground, and if there's a problem the patient consults the doctor," says Scott. By the time astronauts reach Mars, there'll be a 40-minute time lag in communications, if it's possible to make contact at all. "We have to begin preparing for not only being able to diagnose things in spaceflight but also to treat them as well," Scott says.

Artificial intelligence is likely to be a part of the solution. If you're imagining the holographic doctor from Star Trek, downgrade your expectations, at least for the next few decades. Kris Lehnhardt, the element scientist for exploration medical capability at Nasa, says: "We are many, many, many years away from: please state the nature of the medical emergency." Emmanuel Urquieta is deputy chief scientist at the Translational Institute for Space Health (TRISH), a Nasa-funded program which conducts research into healthcare for deep space missions. While full AI may be a way off, Urquieta believes some form of artificial intelligence will still play a crucial role. "It's going to be essential for a mission to Mars," he says. While the crew for a mission to Mars will likely include a medical doctor, he explains: "No single physician can know everything." And, of course: "What happens if that astronaut gets sick?" Research projects funded by TRISH include Butterfly iQ, a handheld ultrasound device for use by non-medical personnel to make diagnoses that would otherwise require bulky equipment and a trained operator. VisualDx is an AI diagnostics tool originally developed to analyse images and identify skin conditions. The technology is now being adapted to help astronauts diagnose a wide range of conditions most commonly encountered in space, without an internet connection.

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What Happens When You Have a Heart Attack on the Way To Mars?

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  • Voyager requiring voice communication input is kind of dumb.

    What happens when a person can't talk and has a hoarse voice or even a bad accent? Are they just supposed to be ignored? Isn't there a keyboard interface as a fallback?

    If we actually had the technology for a holographic doctor I would assume we would have non-invasive mind reading such as Neuralink [theguardian.com] -- except one that actually works despite how hard [theconversation.com] it is.

    • Star Trek as a vision of the 24th century is as hilariously unambitious as Georges MéliÃs' La Voyage Dans la Lun.

      Technology like Neuralink even if it was non-invasive will probably be amusingly quaint. By the 24th century we will probably have just uploaded ourselves to the matrix and live in the main computer.

      • by youn ( 1516637 )

        so in your future, the Borg has won?

        • so in your future, the Borg has won?

          The Borg were quaint relics the day they were introduced. Hollywood sci fi villains are invariably laughable because by Hollywood rules they need to be "relatable" and also beatable by the plucky main characters in 45 to 90 minutes. The worst sci fi menaces look like a force of nature to a baseline human and the subtle ones are unrecognizable without the author describing the danger. Even if the Borg would bother to have biological appendages, there's no reason at all they should be either slow or clumsy

          • by necro81 ( 917438 )

            The Borg were quaint relics the day they were introduced. Hollywood sci fi villains are invariably laughable because by Hollywood rules they need to be "relatable" and also beatable by the plucky main characters in 45 to 90 minutes.

            Actually, one of the things I enjoyed about the introduction of the Borg was that they were not beatable by the plucky main characters. Episode "Q Who" [youtube.com]: the only reason the Enterprise escaped was through Q's help.

            • Actually, one of the things I enjoyed about the introduction of the Borg was that they were not beatable by the plucky main characters. Episode "Q Who": the only reason the Enterprise escaped was through Q's help.

              And then they were promptly dumbed down, or the heroes powered up so that was no longer necessary. Deus ex machina is sometimes fun, but it can't become a permanent fixture, and it certainly isn't sci fi. It's just fantasy. Shit, by the end, the Borg had been dumbed down so far they suddenly had a Queen, a singular entity, so the screenwriters would have someone to write dialog for.

      • Star Trek as a vision of the 24th century is as hilariously unambitious as Georges MéliÃs' La Voyage Dans la Lun.

        Also hilarious, Slashdot's attempt's at unicode. Using all the escape codes it is Le Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès.

    • If we actually had the technology for a holographic doctor I would assume we would have non-invasive mind reading

      Why bother with mind-reading? If you have technology that is so advanced it can read complex, detailed thoughts by non-invasively scanning your brain then it can almost certainly diagnose your illness from non-invasively scanning your body.

  • Sorry, no u-turns

  • You die (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @03:53PM (#61274140) Homepage Journal

    What happens when you have a heart attack at the North Pole?
    What happens when you have a heart attack in the Eastern Desert in North Africa?
    What happens when you have a heart attack in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

    The same thing that happens when you go anywhere with insufficient medical personnel and infrastructure.

    • It's expensive to scrub a mission that has been planned for decades due to some bad luck with the crew's health. If you can cover that risk then why wouldn't you?

      • It's expensive to scrub a mission that has been planned for decades due to some bad luck with the crew's health. If you can cover that risk then why wouldn't you?

        t. armchair NASA director.

        The most expendable part of any high-infrastructure-cost mission is the people. Hell, the military pegs the value of a life around 250k in training (sunk cost) and 750k in compensation to families of the individual over their lives. It will be cheaper to send 2-3 people per necessary skillset than it will be to send entire operating rooms, surgeons, and all the necessary equipment for quite awhile.

        • t. armchair NASA director.

          Luckily for the US government Armchair Director is not a paid position consisting of millions of self-appointed volunteers. And if needed I can provide a resume of my long experience as an armchair enthusiast on a wide variety of topics.

          The most expendable part of any high-infrastructure-cost mission is the people

          During the mission the crew is difficult to replace in situ, and mission failure is ultimate result. So again, I ask how much is offsetting risk worth to a billion or trillion dollar mission? Maybe the risk is low and the cost to offset it is too high. Although I suspect pr

      • If you don't have a doctor & nurse (at least) on your Mars mission, you pretty much deserve whatever happens. It's not like you can't send a doctor to Astronaut School....
        • An army trains combat medics to handle both emergency medical treatment and long term patient care, and they do this in addition to their duties as infantry or artillery. It's conceivable to train crew of a long duration space mission to wear multiple hats. (and in fact NASA does exactly that)

          It would be interesting to have a medical doctor on a mission. Just from the research aspect of it alone. I think it will be exciting if we ever have the luxury of a large crew on a mission where observing human health

    • The next question is what to do with the body ? Keep it in the space ship in order to give some sort of burial on Mars, or chuck it out of a hatch into space ?

      • by invid ( 163714 )
        Nothing goes to waste. You need more than poop to fertilize your potatoes.
      • You eject it. It is a health risk due to decomposition and ships won't have extra space for a morgue.
    • Aynen Asansor [amadatech.com]
    • by necro81 ( 917438 )

      What happens when you have a heart attack at the North Pole?
      What happens when you have a heart attack in the Eastern Desert in North Africa?
      What happens when you have a heart attack in a rowboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

      The same thing that happens when you go anywhere with insufficient medical personnel and infrastructure.

      Is that the same or different to what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning [youtube.com]?

  • by BigDukeSix ( 832501 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @03:56PM (#61274154)
    If the on-mission physician gets sick, they treat the patient, up to and including taking out their own appendix. That feat has actually been pulled off successfully (Leonid Rogozov, MD, Antarctica).
    • Well, I would imagine that there would be a physician, as well as someone with enough medical abilities that they sat somewhere between a paramedic and an ER nurse. You're going to want someone else on the crew who is at least somewhat capable of carrying out the role, not only in the unfortunate event that the doctor becomes incapacitated, but also to be able to assist the doctor in any situation critical enough to require it.

      And wow, someone performing an appendectomy on themselves. I officially declare t

  • You die (Score:5, Informative)

    by invid ( 163714 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @03:57PM (#61274156)
    "He's dead, Jim."
    • by bosef1 ( 208943 )

      That was my thought as well. I assume we would be sending more than one astronaut at a time to Mars.

    • "He's dead, Jim."

      Yes. It's kind of the same thing that happens when you have a heart attack while flying a plane or driving a car. You usually don't make it.

  • If you are going to send people to Mars would it really be that hard to include a doctor as one of the passengers?
    Sure they may not have access to fancy equipment but the summary states that the lag talking to people on Mars is too much. The lag talking to a doctor on Mars should be significantly less.

    • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      My reaction exactly.
      There is a lot of good reasons to have a doctor on board.

      Not only to treat the rest of the crew but I expect the main point of the first manned missions to Mars will be to study how astronauts are doing. This will be important if we want to make settlements later, or even just to make sure that people of the next missions will be safe and able to do their job properly. For that, I think it is important to have at least one medical expert, if not a MD, at least someone with extensive trai

    • A holographic doctor

      • A holographic doctor is a huge waste of energy, that you might not have during an emergency. Much better to have an android or wax droid for the job.
    • Manpower, weight and space on any early ship to Mars will be at a premium. So a doctor is wasted space. No matter the specialty of the doctor, the person will have a problem that is outside the doctor's specialty. Or the doctor is a generalist and still doesn't have the specialty knowledge anyway. Plus the logistical train required to support a doctor is immense: Sterile work areas, sterile air systems, sterile instruments, sterile surgical equipment, sterile bedding, sterilization equipment, thousands of k
      • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Will having a doctor on the crew cover every conceivable problem that might arise? Hell no. Having a doctor on earth won't cover every conceivable problem but it sure helps.
        I also wouldn't expect every conceivable test to be available to the doctor but again it would be much better to have one onboard than to not have one. Also, who says that a medical degree is the only thing that the doctor needs to have. There are hundreds of astronauts that have multiple degrees.

        If you are expecting to find the exact sa

        • The original question that was brought up was "heart attack" which is pretty catastrophic and requires some heavy duty equipment to be able to stabilize, save and rehab the patient. All of which requires a pretty intensive logistical train.

          The issue with how medicine is practiced in the "western world" is the doctor is there to set policy for treatment, order tests, review results, decide on a course of action, and put their hands inside the patient when an operation is needed. everything else is handled
      • Given the massive cost of sending humans to Mars you will definately want to spend money on a little insurance (a doctor). Going without would be like going on a long trip with no spare tire.
  • Very simple activate the EMH. According to the historical documents, all ships have them.

  • by SubmergedInTech ( 7710960 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @04:23PM (#61274268)

    CPR instructor here.

    If your heart stopped because you were electrocuted performing some repair, the heart is intact. CPR plus early access to defibrillation may save you.

    If it stopped because of heart disease, odds are the heart itself needs repair. Bypass surgery or inserting a pacemaker is out of the question on a small mission. Even real-time cardiac imaging so you can insert a stent requires big, heavy equipment. Easier and lighter to ship a backup astronaut.

    If it stopped because of trauma (major accident), the odds you're coming back are poor even if you're on Earth and someone starts CPR immediately and you get to a trauma center during that first golden hour. Still non-zero, so please do attempt CPR. But in space - even in low earth orbit - you're out of luck.

  • I am of course not a doctor, but I've seen many. They are like detectives, there are clues, evidencies and they draw the concusion. Not some hodgepodge of guesswork based on millions of captcha images, trained by thousands of apes.

  • Same as here.

  • Why should you point that out? Is it because geek scientists use names from StarTrek genre for things not even remotely the same? Like teleportation? Tricoder? Hologram? Really?
  • A physically fit person is just as likely to have their appendix explode or to suffer from a stroke as a couch-bound fat slob. They're also just as likely to get cancer, or the common cold.

    • A physically fit person is just as likely to have their appendix explode or to suffer from a stroke as a couch-bound fat slob.

      No, they are not. Couch-bound fat slobs are 70% more likely to have a heart attack [webmd.com] than someone who is physically fit.

      People who are physically fit, as measured by a high level of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), are less likely to develop heart disease and less likely to die from any cause, a study shows.

      The researchers found that compared to those with a high CRF, those with low cardiorespiratory fitness had a 70% higher risk of death from any cause and a 56% higher risk of heart disease events, such as heart attack or stroke. Compared to those with an intermediate level of physical fitness, those with a low CRF had a 40% higher risk of death from any cause and 47% higher risk of heart events.

      • The study does not appear to decouple stroke risk from heart attack risk - like most studies of that sort it seems to consider heart and cardiovascular disease in aggregate. And I did not mention heart attacks or other types of heart diseases at all.

        You're welcome to try to argue the appendix, cancer, and common cold statements as well.

      • So you don't know what a stroke is. You are dumb. Hint, it's not an event in the heart but brain.

        What the OP said was fact.

  • by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Wednesday April 14, 2021 @05:50PM (#61274540)

    Every space consultant knows that it's all about blockchain tech.

  • No one is making it back from that trip anyway. Pretty sure any tin can we build isn't going to be tough enough to withstand the trip there and back. Folks watch too much sci-fi. Going to need a big ship to carry crew and 2 years worth of food and supplies and beer and weed.

    • Better pack 6x the amount of weed you think you'll need. I'll bet JPL builds a really nice gravity-not-required bong.

      • Except weed is out. Almost nothing is burnable on modern ships, so toking up is going to be tough. And the oxygen supply is limited so every astronaut has an intense fear of fire in space.

        edibles on the other hand...
        • I heard the JPL bong has its own oxygen tank, along with butane and an enclosed burning chamber. Those guys think of everything, just pack and press the button. There is even an adapter plate for the space toilet that helps clean the space bong. Its an amazing piece of technology really. Can't wait until these advances are affordable for everyone.

    • Travelling through space is mostly coasting, not under thrust. While coasting the ship has no major stresses upon it so it will last just fine. The Apollo moon rocket didn't have Mars range, but if provided extra fuel and consumables it could have made the trip just fine (except the landing part due to poor air braking, and the lack of radiation shielding against solar flares).
  • > (One option is to plant your feet on the ceiling and extend your arms downwards to compress the patient's chest.)

    What do the words "ceiling" and "downwards" mean when you're on your way to Mars?

    • Since you need to have the patient lying on a flat surface, "downwards" is towards that surface. The "ceiling" is the surface of the room opposite and parallel to the one on which the patient is lying (the "floor"). And in this context, "lying" doesn't involve gravity, but being held against a surface by restraints and/or other people. Everything is relative, but that doesn't mean it's undefined.

  • General relativity tells us that due to the much higher speed of motion than people on earth, the time it takes for the heart attack to happen will appear longer to the doctors monitoring from earth.
  • Wait. What do you know that their physicians don't?

    IF is probably the word you're looking for if you don't want to make sensationalist - clickbait - titles. Oh, you do? Well, keep up the terrible work!

  • We've already played a similar scenario out, right here on Earth. Jerri Nielsen [wikipedia.org] diagnosed, and was eventually treated with supplies from a special air-drop and an early evac. IANADoctor, so I'm not sure if the delayed treatment had anything to do with the later recurrence and fatal metastasis.

    Obviously this gets worse on a trip to Mars.

    Heart attacks are dramatic, but on a trip that long, with that much radiation, there's a decent chance that somebody is going get the big C of some kind. Sure would suck

  • You would think, if you are on a mission to Mars, the smart thing would be to have an actual DOCTOR on the mission. I mean, you shouldn't be sending a two-to-three person crew on a months-long journey. One of them should be a GP with surgical experience, preferably one with combat experience or ER experience to handle the stress of such a situation.
  • In 1969, we put people on the moon because we were willing to take risks. Some people died in the attempts leading up to the first successful moon landing.

    Today, we have a culture that is obsessed with eliminating all risks, whether from driving, or flying, or spilling hot coffee on yourself, or (dare I say it?) COVID.

    It's not a bad thing to reduce risks. We have all benefited from safer cars and airplanes. But I would argue that the pendulum has swung too far when a kid has to wear a helmet to ride a tricy

  • Surely the question is "if" not "when"? I have a funny feeling that astronauts with known heart conditions are a bit thin on the ground.

  • The US Navy's Fleet Ballistic Submarines (SSBNs) will stay at sea and submerged for months at a time. It's similar to a Mars mission: For large parts of that, they've out of high-bandwidth communications 24x7, and that can't be relaxed even if somebody gets ill. The populations are young and fit, but medical emergencies do happen, particularly injuries.

    SSBNs do have excellent medical facilities, but no physician. One or sometimes two Submarine Independent Duty Corpsmen handle medical emergencies, if need

  • What happens? The answer is obvious.

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