HAVE you got what it takes to become an astronaut? Being a top gun or test pilot certainly helps. You should be quick-thinking and stay calm under pressure. A smattering of knowledge about physiology, engineering and physics would be useful. And then, of course, there鈥檚 the legwarmers.
French choreographer Kitsou Dubois (right, top), believes a little dance training could be the best way to adjust to the topsy-turvy nature of life in space. And she鈥檚 not being laughed out of the spaceport: the European Space Agency is giving the idea some serious consideration.
Living and moving in zero gravity is a real hassle. On Earth we recognise up and down from visual signposts鈥攖he vertical lines of walls, for instance鈥攖ogether with signals from our balance organs, the semicircular canals in our inner ear. At the same time, we feel our weight: our organs, the pull of our arms and head, and pressure through the soles of our feet. These add up to give us a clear picture of whether our body is stable.
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But in zero gravity almost all these signals disappear. The only things you can use to orient yourself are the walls of the craft around you. And since these visual signals clash with the way your body feels, you end up sick and disoriented. As if that weren鈥檛 enough, astronauts also complain of poor hand-eye coordination. 鈥淭he distinction between the body and the surroundings becomes blurred,鈥� says Dubois. In low gravity, simple tasks like passing a spanner to a colleague become a major challenge. And things can get even worse for astronauts during a space walk because the familiar visual cues of the inside of the craft are gone.
Astronauts do eventually learn to cope with these difficulties, but Dubois thinks she might be able to help prepare them long before they get into orbit.
Ballerinas and astronauts face similar problems, she says. As dancers spin or leap, their balance organs send conflicting signals to their brain, which can lead to dizziness and even nausea. And so dancers, like astronauts, have to learn how to cope. Some use a technique called 鈥渟potting鈥濃�攆ixing their eyes on points around them and using them as a visual reference point that helps prevent dizziness. Others prefer to use their own body, relying on a mental picture of their centre of gravity and posture for their frame of reference.
Astronauts could use these tricks and others, Dubois reckons, and she has more than a decade of experimental evidence to prove it. In 1994, for example, she took two unlucky people for a ride aboard ESA鈥檚 鈥渧omit comet鈥�, a converted airliner that flies in long parabolic curves. Each parabola provides about 30 seconds of 鈥渕icrogravity鈥濃�攏ot quite zero gravity, but not far off. Neither of Dubois鈥檚 companions was a dancer, but she had given one of them 36 hours of dance tuition that concentrated on two tasks: ways to find the body鈥檚 centre of gravity, and movements that can help orient the body. During their moments of free fall, she filmed them carrying out a variety of simple tasks, such as manipulating a ball or spinning a partner鈥檚 body. After the trip, Carole Tafforin, a physiologist at the Centre for Biological Motion Research at the University of Toulouse, analysed the video. Tafforin found that the volunteer with dance instruction performed better, with improved coordination and greater control over posture.
It鈥檚 not conclusive, but it was encouraging. Since then, Dubois has tested a variety of movements underwater, on trampolines, climbing walls and during a dozen flights on the vomit comet, all in an attempt to find what kind of movements astronauts might need to make, and what kind of dance training might help. In 1999, she brought her experiences together in a thesis on aesthetics, science and technology published by the University of Paris 8.
She has now developed a series of movements that, she believes, will help prepare astronauts for life in space (see Graphic). The idea is to give the astronaut a stronger awareness of body orientation and limb position, and how each movement will affect balance. Exercises include pelvis and upper body rotations, leaps, bends and walking with weights attached at the waist, which alters the body鈥檚 centre of mass.
During an astronaut鈥檚 training鈥攚hich can last up to 18 months鈥擠ubois suggests they repeat these exercises for 30 to 40 minutes every couple of days, and include one session of improvised movement every few weeks. These techniques could also be adapted for underwater training sessions.
Although there鈥檚 some evidence that ballet training helps, it鈥檚 hard to be precise about its benefits. And this gives ammunition to the sceptics. It鈥檚 certainly going to be hard to convince NASA: about 15 years ago the agency invited a group of American Olympic gymnasts for a ride in its own vomit comet to see how they coped with microgravity. According to Chuck Oman, an engineer at MIT鈥檚 Man Vehicle Lab, they didn鈥檛 perform significantly better than other people, and he thinks the same will go for ballet dancers. Richard Truly, a NASA administrator and former astronaut, also has trouble seeing the benefits of ballet training. Once you learn the basics, it鈥檚 not hard to move around in microgravity, he says. But he concedes that anything that could help with motion sickness would be a boon.
But despite the reservations, ESA was willing to give it a try. Last July, it asked Dubois to test her training schedules on 40 European students who had been selected to carry out experiments aboard ESA鈥檚 vomit comet. Dubois is still writing up the results of her training, but believes it made a difference to the students. And this month, in a collaboration with the biodynamics group at Imperial College London, she is sending dancers on another ESA microgravity flight. The results of this strange partnership could be important in developing treatments for people with spinal injuries (see 鈥淲alking with astronauts鈥�).
As yet, though, her main goal remains unfulfilled鈥攕he is still negotiating with ESA for the chance to train real astronauts. There鈥檚 bound to be some resistance to the idea, but if ESA allows Dubois to go ahead, even the toughest members of the astronaut corps could soon find themselves with a whole new set of skills. Next time there鈥檚 a giant leap for mankind, it might be a lot more graceful.
Walking with astronauts
Dancing in zero gravity could suggest ways to improve the lives of some of us back here on Earth, according to Nick Davey, a neuroscientist at Imperial College, London. When he takes trained dancers on the European Space Agency鈥檚 鈥渧omit comet鈥� later this month, he believes their muscles will provide information that will help people who can鈥檛 balance or walk because of an accident or stroke.
Davey and his fellow biodynamicists are interested in gravity鈥檚 influence on our nervous system. Float someone in space and you can start to gauge how much the brain relies on gravity to stay upright as we move about.
Lift an arm, for instance, and the muscles on the opposite side of your lower spine seem to react immediately, working to keep your spine straight. How do these muscles know they should contract? Are our bodies responding to a slight wobble when the arm is raised鈥攕omething that would be affected by reduced gravity?
Davey believes not. So far, his experiments indicate that these two muscle groups are hard-wired together. As volunteers raise their arm, muscles in the back become more sensitive to nerve stimulation, helping them to fine-tune posture. This would be good news for people with damaged nerves in their back, Davey says, because a direct 鈥渃orticospinal鈥� route seems to be much easier to retrain after an accident or a stroke than a system that relies on signals from receptors in the skin and muscle.
He reckons the muscles of trained dancers should be even more sensitive, since dancers seem to have particularly fine control over the muscles in their back. They can stand on one leg and stick an arm or leg out without falling over鈥攐r even wobbling. 鈥淭hey have exquisite control over whatever it is they do to maintain their posture,鈥� says Davey.
And so he has lined up a group of dancers whose muscle sensitivity will be tested while ESA鈥檚 plane flies its parabolic, low-gravity path. As long as no one throws up, it should be an uplifting performance.