Hello, Neil and Buzz.
This certainly has to be
the most historic telephone call ever made.
For every American this has to be
the proudest day of our lives.
If you go back to the dawn of the space age,
they were very much the right stuff, fighter pilot jocks,
the first generation were recruited out
in the U.S. Air Force.
The profile of someone who would go into space
has a certain look and feel, a certain prototype to it.
I mean, really up until now, if you had a disability
you would have naturally assumed that spaceflight
was not an option for you.
We believe it's time to assess the feasibility
of sending astronauts with physical disabilities into space.
Without the force of gravity
and in a totally different environment
we have an opportunity to create a new norm,
and an environment where, really,
we can accommodate any type of body
and there is no disabled or able-bodied body,
rather everyone's the same.
You look back in history to seeing the difference
that putting women in space made,
and putting people of color in space made.
The same, I'm sure will be true
when we open those doors to people with disabilities.
It's just the start, I think,
and I don't know where it's gonna lead.
In 1959, the first U.S. astronauts
were selected.
All seven men were military personnel,
but before these astronauts came the Gallaudet Eleven.
The Gallaudet Eleven were a real important group
and I don't know if you can see this picture or not.
The Gallaudet Project was really
initiated by Ashton Graybiel,
who was one of the pioneers in space flight.
He tested all of the early astronauts.
He was especially interested in human responses
to acceleration and to unusual forces.
Dr. Graybiel, who was working with NASA,
chose 11 volunteers
who shared a very specific characteristic.
They were all deaf.
Spinal Meningitis had disrupted
their inner ear vestibular system
also known as the labyrinth, which is devoted exclusively
to the detection of acceleration.
For a decade they underwent various experiments
that included living 12 days in a 20 foot rotation room,
and sailing in extremely rough waters during a storm
in the North Atlantic.
In every single provocative situation
in which he tested the Labyrinthine loss subjects
there were no symptoms of motion sickness.
The funny part of it is throughout it
most of the crew and all of the people coordinating
the labyrinthine loss subjects
were vomiting their hearts out.
As people in the trade say, they were barfing.
And the Labyrinthine loss subjects
were just sitting playing cards.
Having a ball.
NASA was then better able
to understand how the body's sensory systems work
and the effects of prolonged weightlessness
and space motion sickness.
I think there's a lot of reasons
why people with disabilities
actually are really well suited to be astronauts.
The first thing that comes to mind
is that people with disabilities
are used to being very nimble
and to being very dynamic and responsive,
to thinking quickly and problem solving, right?
And so all of those are characteristics
that would be highly desirable for an astronaut, right?
Like having that quick response time
and being able to think creatively
about new solutions to problems that might develop.
While the Gallaudet Eleven
made human spaceflight possible
they've been forgotten from its history.
And since then differently abled individuals
have largely been cut out of the astronaut process
until now.
Earlier this year the European Space Agency
announced that it would not only be hiring
new astronauts for the first time since 2008,
but it would also be running a feasibility project
in the hopes of training its first disabled astronaut.
This was something we'd been talking about in house
for the past two or three years.
I used to call it Project X
with the Head of the Astronaut Center
because we kind of asked ourselves the question
we've always had these basic minimum medical standards,
but they've always called for somebody
that's able-bodied in the traditional sense.
But the question was, well, why?
Have we asked ourselves whether we can fly somebody
with a physical disability to the space station?
And so alongside the call for the mainstream core
astronaut call, we've introduced this feasibility study
for a parastronaut.
Like the Gallaudet Eleven Program
there are very specific requirements for those taking part
in the ESA's feasibility project.
In this first call,
they selected different types of amputees
at different levels of lower limb involvement,
as well as individuals of short stature.
And honestly, I think it was a really smart move
because these are clearly very well-defined disabilities,
but they are primarily musculoskeletal in nature,
fairly uncomplicated from a physiologic standpoint
yet there's this musculoskeletal feature
that creates a visible difference
and therefore categorizes them
as disabled, so to speak.
And for that reason
when you think about all the complexities of spaceflight,
of being an astronaut,
it's definitely like a really good starting point.
The ESA has committed an initial budget
of 1 million Euros, and will be working with two or three
selected applicants on what technical adaptations
existing space crafts and stations may need.
Ignition.
For example, for the launch vehicle,
for the crew capsule that gets them up to the space station
we, the Europeans, don't have our own vehicles
so that means we're gonna have to work
with the U.S. providers.
There's Boeing and the SpaceX
who send astronauts up to the space station
so we're gonna have to work technically with them.
They're gonna have to also train to be a regular astronaut
because what's important for us is this
is not kind of a joy ride.
We want them to be able to participate
in a meaningful mission
aboard the International Space Station,
to undertake maintenance tasks,
to run scientific experiments and so on.
You know, in the disability community
we use this phrase called universal design,
and I think what the parastronaut program
is pushing us to think about is, again,
designing our environments so that they're more universal
and suited for everybody and every type of ability level
from day one without having to retrofit it
later down the road.
So, I think that thinking about universal design
as it relates to settlements in other planets
or space in general helps us to really reframe that
and to think about whether you're an infant,
or someone who's 100 years old,
whether you're large or small,
whether you have a visible disability or not,
what type of environment can we envision
that reduces the barriers for everyone
to the greatest extent possible?
Some of the adaptive support systems
these individuals use on a daily basis
may no longer be needed in space.
An environment that could level the playing field
for many who are considered disabled on Earth.
When you look at the International Space Station
everybody floats up there.
Your use of your feet in space isn't really needed.
And in fact, astronauts come back with very soft feet
because they haven't been used for all that time.
So, the adaptations on the space station,
they will be considered,
but I imagined them to be not massively challenging
because of the environment that you are in.
Once you're in zero G environment
the legs are not tremendously useful.
Of course the astronauts spend a lot of time
doing physical exercise to maintain their health
so that when they come back to Earth
they're in a good state
because if you don't do so you lose muscle mass
and you also lose bone mass.
Astronauts can lose
as much as 10% of bone density during six months in space.
To offset the effect they exercise for two hours a day,
at least six days a week.
They do an hour of cardio, perhaps running on a treadmill,
exercising on a bicycle.
And they do an hour
of what you and I might refer to as weightlifters.
Now in space, you can't lift weights.
Nothing has a weight because you don't feel gravity,
but we use hydraulic Springs, like resistance,
to tension those muscles and so on.
Maintaining bone and muscle mass
will be critical for parastronauts,
but as humans venture further from Earth
more room on rockets and space stations is needed for fuel
so space is at a premium.
One innovation that could let exercise
take up less space and time
is the high frequency impulse for microgravity, or HIFIm.
HIFIm promises to reduce the astronauts current workouts
to just six minutes a day on one machine.
It does this by enabling astronauts to jump in zero gravity.
So, to be able to jump is a fantastic way
to load the skeletal system,
build up muscle density and also cardiovascularly
it's ferocious on the body.
Through ESA bedrest studies
we've proven that jumping will mitigate bone density
and muscle mass loss with just 50 jumps a day.
That's four to six minutes a day.
That's amazing.
The time that's gonna give astronauts back
to do experiments and more science in space.
But you can't just jump because you've got to make sure
the load and vibration does not go through the spacecraft.
So HIFIm is designed to absorb its own load and vibration
when an individual is jumping.
HIFIm has been developed
with both astronauts and parastronauts in mind.
Former Royal Marine, Lee Spencer,
has been trialing the machine
throughout its prototype phase.
My left leg was really badly damaged
when I lost my right leg,
and that really means that I can't actually sprint or jump,
but the great thing that this does is it allows you,
as an amputee, to train in a way
that I've not been able to train before,
and that's with explosive muscle movements
where you can jump again.
We can actually control the load
that's going through his prosthetic and then into his limb.
So we can develop the bone density and muscle mass
through that limb, through both limbs, through his pelvis,
through his spine,
but also condition the points where the stump of his leg
meets the prosthetic and we can condition and develop that
and make it stronger and more use
to getting that load pass through it.
Although it's not yet part
of the feasibility project,
the UK Space Agency has been supporting the development
of the HIFIm.
Later this year it will be tested in micro gravity
on a parabolic flight where Lee will become
the first disabled person to jump in zero gravity.
We, in society,
tend to define someone by their disability.
I thought I had to redefine who I was
within the parameters of disability,
and I was wrong to do that.
And in no other walk of life is someone defined by something
they're not good at, or something they can't do,
but if you have a disability
then that can tend to define who you are
certainly from other people's point of view.
You know, if you look at the definition of disability
by the World Health Organization,
where we've really moved globally is a understanding
that disability is a combination
of both an individual's impairment,
but then also how that interacts with the environment.
And so you can have a specific impairment,
take the amputee for example,
but if that individual is then working and living
within an environment that is fully accessible
then the disability, so to speak, really melts away, right?
And so disability is really defined by our environment.
And, you know, that's why all of this work
around the parastronauts and thinking about adapting space
is really so innovative and exciting
'cause I think we have a opportunity
to really totally redefine what is a, so to speak,
normal body and what needs to be adapted.
If the Feasibility Project is successful
the European Space Agency will be looking to include
parastronauts in future missions,
including a trip to the International Space Station by 2025.
But beyond making space more accessible
the ESA is also hoping a diverse crew will give them
an even greater chance of success in future missions.
We know that diverse teams are better teams.
We know that people
that don't all have the same life experience,
and they don't have all thinking the same way,
come from different countries work better together.
It's the fantastic thing about working European Space Agency
with 22 different countries working together
and those different cultural backgrounds
and ways of thinking make us strong.
And the same is true if you've got a crew
trying to go to Mars for the first time,
you want a mix of people, different genders,
different backgrounds, different countries
to make a stronger team.
The space industry
is known for its innovation
and the research and findings from the Feasibility Program
might not only produce the first parastronaut,
but also have an impact on how disability and adaptation
are treated back here on Earth.
A lot of the adaptive technology
that we use here in the U.S.
you know, the speed of research and development,
the speed of innovation
sometimes can be a little bit stagnant.
And so I think that reframing that and thinking about,
well, how do you best empower people with disabilities
in a space environment.
How do you best empower people to be astronauts
has the ability to translate
to really push us a lot more quickly in our innovation here.