Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How astronauts handle medical meltdowns in space”.
We’Re here in Boston, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and we’re about to get a crash course in how to deal with a medical emergency in space.. I’M terrified, (, techno, music, ), (, coughing, ), (, alarm, blares ). The smoke seems to be going down so ( coughing ) and the alarm stopped. So we should be –, ( background noise, drowns out, voices ) NASA astronauts go into space when they’re at their peak physical ability., But like the rest of us, they can still get sick. And when that happens, it’s not as if they can just drive to the Hospital.
Astronauts in low Earth orbit, like those on the International Space Station, still have constant contact with ground control. If there’s a medical emergency., A flight surgeon can talk them through it and provide professional expertise. Astronauts flying to Mars won’t have that luxury. They’ll need to solve emergencies on their own without much help from Earth.
And that’s why we’ve come to the STRATUS Center. It specializes In medical simulations from doctoring, robotic dummies to using virtual reality to practice microscopic surgery. STRATUS received funding from NASA to build its own spacecraft, sick bay, where they run medical emergency simulations.. While astronauts are currently trained in basic medical procedures, this program is focused on how teams should behave during a medical emergency on a deep space mission and what it will take to work autonomously without constant support from ground control..
So what I love about this center is that we’re in a regular old hospital hallway, and then we turn here and we’re in space. Incredible right. I have to hand it to y’all. It looks like you ripped it straight out of a sci-fi movie. Thanks. Well, we had a lot of input from experts from NASA and it’s based on the Destiny module, so it’s the same kind of height and width, so it feels compact., Just as in space.
Weight is such an issue for launching. So how did you decide what tools you would need you know? What are some of the basics that you have to have Heat load is a huge concern and even things like fluids, so we use a lot of IV fluid in the hospital and it’s so heavy to take fluids. So you can’t really do that., And so we’ve got like a basic cardiac kit, a respiratory kit like a first aid kit that you would have with bandages and gauze and so on.. It’S a low resource, healthcare, environment. [ Loren Grush ]. So it’s not a lot of equipment, but it seems, like you, have a lot of different things that could be used for different purposes..
This has all of the medicine you’d need. So this is like a medicine kit. It has some key drugs for dealing with cardiac conditions such as epinephrine. It has atropine, it has albuterol other drugs, and this is actually what it really looks: like.
They’re in these little pouches. So what would happen normally is you’d open the door and things would start to fly all over. The place. Right got ta keep things down.
People come through here and they expect us to have a switch. So we can flick, thew gravity off and people will be floating, so we don’t have that functionality. [ Loren Grush ], So I suit up for the simulations., We’re gon na run through three of them., A common emergency, a dire medical emergency and a full out meltdown.
Situation., The common medical situation we dealt with first was cardiac arrhythmia or an irregular heartbeat. [ Woman On Microphone ]. How are her vital signs? The pulse ox is 96 and heart. Rate’S about 140. Blood pressure is 128/70..
Okay. Can you get an EKG, So the stickers it tells you where to put’em so right, left upper and lower., It’s nervous. [ Woman On Microphone, ], I’m looking at the images from the monitor right now and I think we’re gon na need to give her some medications.. It takes one two three medicine’s in so we got a pause on the monitor. And heart rate’s back. It’S slower, I think we’re good she’s. Looking much better. Whoo, we did it.
I think. ( laughs ). Next, we faced a more dire medical. Emergency.
Ripley had a collapsed lung and I got to try out my shot-giving skills. [ Woman On Microphone. ]. You just go right in and you should hear a rush of air.
[ Brett ] Looks like the oxygen is maybe a little bit better.. You are really thinking now of how does the crew deal with these events in a semi-autonomous or autonomous way? If you have an acute episode and it’s 20 minutes to wait for a response from the flight surgeon on the ground, you don’t have that functionality.. You need answers. Now.
You got to do it., So the crew then has to work autonomously., But we’re lucky in these simulations.. We have communication with ground control to help us do these trainings. And good thing too, because our last test, we faced a critical emergency.
Toxic exposure plus a ship malfunction on top of that. Hi. We have an alarm going off.
It looks like we have a leak. Maybe an ammonia leak., An issue with the ship causes a toxic ammonia leak.. We need to put on our personal protective equipment..
There’S no time.. We don’t have time for that. [ Woman On Microphone. ] Seems like your solar panels are overheating.. Oh crud okay..
On top of all this, one of our solar panels starts overheating, which we have to address for the safety of the entire crew. [ Woman On Microphone ]. Alright, we need to get that solar panel shut down, so it doesn’t overheat and cause more problems. Okay.. Okay, I’m in the process of getting that going. [ Female Crew Member ].
What should we do about this Okay hold on? Can we put the solar panel on pause? We need to talk about Ripley., Wait. No. We can’t put that on pause. Okay..
What does Brett need to do to isolate the solar panel problem [ Woman On Microphone ], So he needs to go into Control. Panel Three., Okay, go to Control Panel Three. [ Woman On Microphone, ], Section J, Section J., Alright., (, coughing, ); Okay, that’s the sound that you’re over. ( groaning ).
We failed These simulations help teams, practice better communication and learn how to work together efficiently under stress.. If you’re dealing with a new emergency, you don’t wan na be figuring out how to work together at the same time, In an extraterrestrial environment, simulating things before they actually occur, figuring out. The ergonomics of how do you take care of patients under very challenging circumstances? Is a real opportunity to improve the care that we provide potential patients in a space mission., And you can’t really go to space all the time and practice.. Unfortunately, you can’t go to space all the time to practice so doing this is at least the beginning of the work towards improving the quality of care in space. Medicine., No astronauts have gone through these simulations yet but STRATUS plans to do more behavioral studies and improve their sick bay simulations and their methods could be incorporated into astronaut training someday..
So I think it’s clear that I have a lot more medical training. I need to do before I’m equipped to deal with one of these emergencies in space.. I think it’s clear that NASA does too.
They’re gon na have to do a lot of simulations like this one before they send astronauts to Mars.. Nasa is still many years away from sending crews into deep space, but when that time comes simulations like these will be critical to training crews to work together so that they’ll be able to handle emergencies without much help from home.. If you enjoyed this video and want more space content with yours, truly, you should check out and subscribe to our new YouTube channel Verge Science., Thanks for watching .