Uc Science Today

Private space tourism is no longer a faraway dream. In fact, Thomas Lang, an imaging scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, is trying to predict what tourists’ lives would be like in space. Researchers, for example, already have plans for designing commercial space habitats. “What happens when you have private space stations? And those stations are geared for commercial activities. You would have people doing manufacturing or research or some other activity in space.” The most pressing question for researchers is how to provide space tourists with an adequate training so they could stay in good health. “Does it have to be NASA-like training program? Will they cut these health requirements down? What’s going to be the right trade off?” Lang says, aging happens very quickly in space and can severely affect astronauts’ bones with lifetime bone structure being lost in just six months. But according to Lang, this could probably be prevented.