Funding NEEMO

David Blaine’s underwater stunt failed to galvanize New Yorkers this week, but a much larger, equally dubious project is already underway, courtesy of the magicians at NASA. The Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 9 project, run and operated by NASA’s National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), is touted as a laboratory to “study performance ability, problem-solving and team cohesion issues that could affect long-duration space flights” — which sounds suspiciously like a high-budget ropes course…

“The NEEMO undersea mission is a similar experience in key ways to what future space travelers might encounter,” said Dr. David Dinges, team leader of NSBRI’s Neurobehavioral and Psychosocial Factors Team and principal investigator on the project. “Crew members live and work together in a small space, isolated from the outside world, and must effectively perform difficult tasks at a high level of alertness, both as individuals and a team.”
…To assess physiologic reactions to the isolated environment, crew members provided saliva samples for analysis of cortisol and stress levels and wore a sensor vest to record how their body was reacting physiologically to the experience. Another component addressed sleep and circadian rhythm disruption. Participants wore a watch-like device that recorded sleep/wake activity patterns and light exposure. A fourth component involved performing a battery of cognitive tests before and after scheduled tasks and EVAs. Data collected from each of the study’s components will be analyzed by NSBRI researchers post-mission.

Instead of practicing for a long-term space mission that never seems to come, we hope the NEEMO people produce some science that could really benefit humanity, such as: explaining the behavior of David Blaine.
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