88 MEN’S FITNESS APRIL 2017
Here, where the ISS’s constant free fall over the planet’shorizon simulates the conditions of microgravity, you can twirl
weightlessly, launch a 220kg object with a small flick of a finger,
and fly across the room, arm outstretched, like Superman in full
save mode. In fact, visit Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space
Center in Houston, with its theatre-size video screen showing live
what’s happening in space, and you’ll sometimes see firsthand an
astronaut doing exactly that.
But terrible things also happen to your body there — some
catastrophic, some even irreversible. Spending just weeks
floating out of the reach of gravity is equivalent to being in a
lengthy hospital bed rest: Your blood volume drops, which means
the heart has less blood to pump and begins to atrophy. With
that go your stamina (from VO2 loss), your aerobic and anaerobic
fitness, and your strength. Some of the bodily fluids in your lower
extremities shift to your head, swelling your face and causing
bruising headaches. One of those liquids, spinal fluid, flattens the
back of your eyeballs and inflames your optic nerve, which may
cause blurry vision and could even cause farsightedness, new
research shows — in fact, almost two-thirds of astronauts who’ve
spent months at the ISS have reported problems with their eyes.
You also run a heightened risk of kidney stones.
As if that’s not devastating enough, in a reduced-gravity
environment, your bones lose minerals and begin decreasing
in density at a rate of more than 1% per month. (By comparison,
elderly men and women on Earth lose density at 1% to 1.5% a
year.) This makes the bones weak and brittle and puts you at
greater risk of osteoporosis-related fractures later in life. Oh, and
your muscles, including those in your spine, wither rapidly.
Few know this better than astronaut Robert “Shane”
Kimbrough. As you’re reading this, it’s likely that Kimbrough is on
his way or just back to Earth from the International Space Station,
where since October 2016 he commanded Expedition 50, whose
stated mission was, in part, to study the effects of microgravity on
the body’s ability to heal and to research “how lighting can change
the overall health and well-being of crew members”.
Once the Soyuz Descent module has parachuted onto the
steppe of Kazakhstan in central Asia, Kimbrough will return to
NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where researchers will subject him
to months, even years, of testing, evaluation and rehabilitation to
gauge the long-term effects of living in microgravity.
What kind of extreme training does it take to endure, much less
thrive, in space for months — and possibly years — on end?
More important, what kind of man?Except by express invitation,only astronauts
and support staff can enter Building 26 at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston.
Hidden inside this nondescript, buff-coloured cinder block
structure on the northeast side of NASA’s 65-hectare campus is
a high-tech, state-of-the-art fitness centre where America’s 44
current astronauts train for their missions into space. Half the
length of a football field, the gleaming, airy gym is as spotless
as a showroom floor, with row upon row of resistive machines,
stationary bicycles, free weights, treadmills and elliptical trainers,
as well as a half-court basketball floor and a 20m, two-lane lap
pool — everything a fitness junkie could desire.
On this warm May morning in 2016, several months in advance
of his autumn space shot, Shane Kimbrough, an energetic,
military-fit, 49-year-old retired US Army colonel, is grinding his
way through a cardio-and-weightlifting regimen designed to place
as much stress on his body as possible and hammer his skeleton
and musculature into near-superfit form. Kimbrough has been
performing the routine for almost two years in preparation for his
upcoming flight mission; in that time, he’s done enough running,
lifting and squatting to satisfy the most demanding of professional
trainers — not surprising, since Mark Guilliams, who worked with
the Houston Astros in Major League Baseball, is now NASA’s lead
specialist on astronaut strength, conditioning and rehabilitation.
At this moment, Kimbrough, dressed in grey and black workout
clothes, is standing astride a futuristic-looking “universal gym”,
a piston-pulley-and-bar contraption called ARED (short forMiraculous
things happen in
space, roughly
350km above the
Earth, where the
International
Space Station
(ISS) speeds
across the sky
at about 8km
per second.