in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so little was known about how humans would
react to spaceflight that researchers had to get pretty creative. And one
interesting moment of creativity was recruiting deaf participants for various
motion sickness studies. This series of test was done cooperatively between NASA
and the US Navy, and it might sound a little bit weird but it actually makes a
lot of sense when you consider where motion sickness comes from within the
body. It all comes down to the vestibular system, which is the system inside the
inner ear that's responsible for balance and all kinds of sensory information
about movement and orientation in space. Sensitive nerve and hair cells react to
the movement of fluid inside the inner ear to give our brains information about
motion, balance, and even spatial orientation. Some scientists still think
there might be multiple causes for motion sickness, but one of the most
commonly agreed-upon causes is called "sensory conflict theory." Think about when
you read in a car if you get motion sickness. Your eyes looking at the book
don't see any movement but the fluid inside your inner ear is aware that
you're moving forward. This sends conflicting information to your brain,
you get nauseous, and then you throw up, which is deeply unpleasant for anybody. A
similar thing happens in space when astronauts get space sickness. The
vestibular system suddenly doesn't have the same cues of up-and-down or motion
because they're weightless, but the eyes see things as being quote-unquote "normal"
and you can still read a book so you still get that conflict of
information that can lead to nausea and vomiting, which is what nobody wants in
space. Not only can you not exactly air out a spacecraft very easily, but if that
liquid clumps up and gets into a control panel... that can be a very bad day for
electronics. Not to mention that means that you can't do
spacewalks, and it means that you'd have to shift around the schedule to account
for a sick astronaut. NASA knew this could be an issue and set about trying
to understand how people react to stimuli that can invoke motion sickness,
things like high gravity acceleration and then zero
gravity. To understand the broad spectrum of how people might react to motion
sickness or of these situations that could invoke motion sickness, NASA tested
11 deaf individuals. Now the way they became deaf is really important here. Of
these 11 deaf men between the ages of 25 and 48, all but one was deaf after
childhood bout with spinal meningitis. Spinal meningitis can, among other
effects, cause lasting damage to the vestibular system of the inner ear by
killing those sensitive nerve and hair cells that we need for that sensory
information about balance motion and spatial orientation. That meant that
these men had the vital system involved in motion sickness -- the vestibular system --
damaged and they were theoretically completely immune to motion sickness. So
NASA tried to make them motion sick! There were a series of tests done with
these men throughout the 1960s and some of them sound really pretty awful. In one
test four men were put into a room where the walls spun at 10 revolutions per
minute for 12 straight days, and not one of them got motion sick. In another test
a number of the deaf men were put on board a vote with 20 men who could hear
(so their vestibular system was intact) on a boat that was sailing in very choppy
waters off the coast of Nova Scotia. The men played cards and generally felt fine
while 15 of the 20 men who could hear all got violently ill. In fact, the deaf man
had no motion sickness, not even when the choppy waters got so scary that they all
feared shipwreck! Even the panic couldn't induce any kind of nausea in these men.
Another test had them floating around in the infamous vomit comet, the plane that
flies parabolas to give you short bursts of weightlessness and it's called the
vomit comet because most people throw up. But these men didn't throw up and when
researchers tested their urine after the flight for the presence of stress
hormones they found none whereas the men who could hear who did the same test did
have raised levels of stress hormones in their urine. So it really did seem like
these men were just completely immune to motion sickness. It was a very odd and
very unique and very interesting series of tests that
NASA did in cooperation with the naval school of aviation medicine in the 1960s.
And ultimately these 11 deaf men played a massive and unsung role and helping
get humans off the Earth. If you love learning weird little tidbits about
space history be sure to subscribe to this channel because I do regular videos
telling you all the things you never thought you even wanted to know about
old timey space flight. And of course as always I have a little bit more about
this story on my companion blog post over at discover the link is in the
description below if you are curious. I also want to remind you guys that you
can now sponsor Vintage Space to help make the content that you love possible.
There's a video about how that works right up here. Of course leave me any
questions comments and concerns that you have in the comments down below. Is there
anything you'd like to see covered in the future episode any question that I
didn't quite answer? Let me know all of your thought, and of course you can
follow me across social media Facebook Twitter Instagram for daily Vintage
Space content. As always guys thank you so much for watching and I'll see you
next time!
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