NASA Offers $5000 a Month For You to Lie in Bed

**min0 lee** · 05-08-2008, 11:13 AM

Need a break from the working, walking, and standing required by the demanding and stressful life you lead?
Well, pack your bags for Houston because NASA wants to pay you $17,000 to stay in bed for 90 straight days.
The bed-rest experiment, to take place in the Human Test Subject Facility of Johnson Space Center, is designed to allow scientists to study some of the effects of microgravity on the human body. We read on the Bed Rest Study website:

Participants will spend 90 days lying in bed, (except for limited times for specific tests) with their body slightly tilted downward (head down, feet up). Every day, they will be awake for 16 hours and lights out (asleep) for 8 hours.

It's unclear, however, whether you'll be allowed to read with a flashlight under the covers.
Jokes aside, astronauts who've spent lengthy stays in space have suffered serious repercussions. Our bodies have evolved mechanisms to deal with a certain amount of gravitational force--namely, the amount present on Earth; reduce g and blood pools in the feet, muscles atrophy and bones lose their density. It can take astronauts (or cosmonauts) months to readjust to the Earth's gravitational force.
If you're still interested, feel free to apply. You'll have to pass the Air Force medical examination standards and take a blood test, which we assume means that you won't have any help from recreational drugs to alleviate the boredom of lying prone for 2,160 hours.
Here at Wired Science, we can't decide if this is the sweetest way to make five grand a month or the worst punishment you could inflict on a person. The deciding factor seems to be

the inclusion of a World of Warcraft subscription.

**Little Wing** · 05-08-2008, 11:24 AM

alone???

**tucker01** · 05-08-2008, 11:50 AM

I'm off. Cya.

**KelJu** · 05-08-2008, 11:53 AM

Sounds like pure hell. I hurt if I stay in the bed past 10 hours.

**Doublebase** · 05-08-2008, 12:08 PM

That does sound like hell. Forget that.

**DaMayor** · 05-08-2008, 12:24 PM

I thought you already did that for a living?

**maniclion** · 05-08-2008, 01:22 PM

Originally Posted by KelJu

Sounds like pure hell. I hurt if I stay in the bed past 10 hours.

Yeah, I start to get headaches, my neck gets stiff, my right shoulder blade starts to burn, my knees ache, my back starts to knot up......very irritating, I don't know how people could lay in bed all day let alone 10-12 hours.....

**danny81** · 05-08-2008, 01:36 PM

wait they stay in bed alone all day? and they cant watch tv or play video games or anyhng?

**DaMayor** · 05-08-2008, 01:39 PM

I knew if I posted that pic, you'd show up.

**DOMS** · 05-08-2008, 01:51 PM

Waisting away for three months in a bed? Hell no.

Well...unless they put Jessica Simpson on my face. Three months later, my muscles would be wasted away, but I'd have the strongest tongue on the planet.

**goob** · 05-08-2008, 01:55 PM

Fuck it. Put me on a steady intavenous supply of thorazine, THC and LSD, and sign me up.

I'd also like in bed naked body messages from all the Miss World contestents on a daily basis.

**Yanick** · 05-08-2008, 02:24 PM

That sounds horrible. You don't know how bad it is for people to stay in bed all the time. The really terminally ill, bed bound patients that i work with have some of the most miserable existences on this planet. Constipation, Deep Vein Thombosis, Muscle Atrophy, Depression, Pressure sores (decubitus ulcers), GERD and many other complications may arise from laying in bed all day every day. Now put someone in a position such as they are suggesting and you are opening another whole can of worms. I would do it for 1 million bucks, but i don't think 5 grand would be enough for me to put myself through that.

**Mista** · 05-08-2008, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by goob

Fuck it. Put me on a steady intavenous supply of thorazine, THC and LSD, and sign me up.

I'd also like in bed naked body messages from all the Miss World contestents (besides the black ones) on a daily basis.

**DOMS** · 05-08-2008, 05:59 PM

Originally Posted by Yanick

That sounds horrible. You don't know how bad it is for people to stay in bed all the time. The really terminally ill, bed bound patients that i work with have some of the most miserable existences on this planet. Constipation, Deep Vein Thombosis, Muscle Atrophy, Depression, Pressure sores (decubitus ulcers), GERD and many other complications may arise from laying in bed all day every day. Now put someone in a position such as they are suggesting and you are opening another whole can of worms. I would do it for 1 million bucks, but i don't think 5 grand would be enough for me to put myself through that.

I looked up "pressure sores" (aka, bed sores) on wiki. I really wish I hadn't.

Sometimes, the desire to know a lot really sucks.

**DaMayor** · 05-08-2008, 06:12 PM

Originally Posted by DOMS

I looked up "pressure sores" (aka, bed sores) on wiki. I really wish I hadn't.

Oh yeah, the wonderful world of decubitus. They're much better in person, especially if they've been "packed". There's nothing like that wonderful gangrenous aroma when you remove the gauze....Ooooh oooh, better yet, all of the cool stuff you can find during debridement. Right Yan?

Bed sores, gangrene, bad poop, and burnt flesh.....smells that will forever stay etched in your memory.

**Yanick** · 05-08-2008, 06:34 PM

Yeah not very fun at all. I've seen stage 4's about as wide as my head and to the bone. Very depressing stuff. A picture is worth a thousand words but seeing/smelling that stuff up close is worth a hundred nightmares. We don't debride them in NYC. We can pack them with debriding creams and such but mechanical debridement is done by doc's/PA's. I've come to terms with the sight/smell of the stuff but when cleansing those things with saline soaked gauze and seeing the pain that these patients go through just breaks my heart.

EDIT: this isn't decubiti related, but my professor was taking care of a patient once with necrosis of the foot and found his toe in the bed. That shit would freak me out.

**danzik17** · 05-08-2008, 06:43 PM

And this is why I'm never going to be cut out for a career in medicine.

**soxmuscle** · 05-08-2008, 06:55 PM

I would rather be dead.

**DaMayor** · 05-08-2008, 08:15 PM

Hey, somebody's got to do it. Besides, for every negative there is always a positive. Its all a balance, ying yang, that's all. For every person I rolled down to the morgue there was a healthy newborn screaming his lungs out in L&D.

In a way it is a good thing stuff breaks your heart, Yan. When it stops getting to ya....time to get out of the biz.

**shiznit2169** · 05-08-2008, 08:21 PM

Why don't they just grab all the homeless people off the streets and give them a place to sleep for 3 months. That way they'll have enough money to buy all the booze in the world and die of alcohol poisoning so we don't have to worry about them.

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