BGSU professor flies into the unknown

A Bowling Green woman was among 12 people with disabilities who recently made history flying in zero gravity as AstroAccess Ambassadors. It's an endeavor they hope will help scientists learn how people with disabilities can travel into space. The AstroAccess website notes "Mission: AstroAccess" is "the first step in a progression toward flying a diverse range of people to space." The parabolic flight on the Zero Gravity Corp. plane, which mimicked the feeling of being weightless, took place Oct. 17. Sheri Wells-Jensen, Ph.D., is a professor of linguistics at Bowling Green State University. She is also blind. While her training is in linguistics, she has also studied disability studies and astrobiology. She came to the latter through an interest in xenolinguistics — the study of what alien languages might be like. Wells-Jensen noted that long exposure to zero gravity can make a person weaker, among other health effects. This prompted the question: "What if you get halfway to Mars and your pilot becomes disabled?" She said NASA is exploring what types of accommodations might be needed to ensure the pilot could still carry out their mission. The AstroAccess website states: "Due to differences in the vestibular system, some deaf individuals are immune or resistant to motion sickness. NASA has known this since the 1950s, when 11 deaf men known as the 'Gallaudet 11' participated in extensive research to help shape the future of human space exploration. During these experiments, NASA proved that deaf space flight participants would be more adaptable to the foreign gravitational environments, and yet there has never been a deaf astronaut." Up is down First, Wells-Jensen agreed to serve on the leadership team working to make the AstroAccess flight possible. Later, she applied to be on the flight. She wasn't sure she'd like it, though, adding, "I don't like roller coasters." Wells-Jensen said everyone describes zero gravity as an "odd sensation." "And I wish we wouldn't all say that, but it's true. ... There isn't an up, anymore, and there isn't a down." She said the flight included 15 parabolas of flying up, then down — and, all of the sudden, she would feel a sense of air between her and the ground. She recalled that "instead of laying there all peaceful and blissing out," she started wanting to know where everything was — and she started to spin. "Am I on the floor? Am I on the ceiling? Where the heck am I?" she wondered. When gravity came back, "all of the sudden there's down again. … How do you take down away and bring it back?" Twelve of the 15 parabolas simulated zero gravity. The remaining three included simulations of gravity on Mars and the moon. (On Mars, a person would weigh about one-third of what they do on Earth, and on the moon they would weigh one-sixth what they do on Earth.) 'An artificial limitation' Wells-Jensen said the experience was a lot of fun, but having fun wasn't the purpose. The purpose of the experience was to figure out what types of accommodations astronauts with disabilities might need. Some of their experiments were more successful than others: Wells-Jensen said they tried to use sound beacons to signal for the participants who were blind, but they couldn't hear them over the noise of the plane. The group also included two wheelchair users and a below-the-knee amputee. So this group explored how to move around and how to remove and replace a prosthetic. Wells-Jensen said participants will be debriefing to discuss what they learned, what wrong assumptions they might have made and what they want to do next. She said current rules to becoming a NASA astronaut are that "you have to be physically just about perfect." People who have had their vision corrected by laser surgery became permitted to become astronauts relatively recently, she noted. But she said the restriction on people with disabilities becoming astronauts is "an artificial limitation" borne out of both people's attitudes and available equipment. So, she said, a goal is to make sure crews have the equipment to allow everybody to do their job. AstroAccess intends to send its ambassadors into zero-gravity flight again. Wells-Jensen said she would go again "in a heartbeat," but it depends on who the best candidates are for the research they are trying to do. Wells-Jensen will teach an honors seminar on space and disability at BGSU this spring. Arthurs: 419-427-8494