Space-sickness rarely hinders probes

Commander Vasily Tsibliyev’s complaints of an irregular heartbeat forced the Russian Space Agency yesterday to postpone crucial repairs to the battered station for a week or more.

Russian flight controllers acknowledge the 43-year-old Tsibliyev and his two crew members have been under considerable stress since a cargo ship rammed Mir on June 25, and they’re hoping some rest will recharge them. At the very least, it gives doctors time to monitor the commander’s heart rate. Doctors aren’t overly concerned: Arrhythmia is common and usually harmless in space, just as it is among healthy people on earth.

Indeed, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin suffered irregular heartbeats on the lunar surface in 1971. Irwin, who died 20 years later of a heart attack, also experienced dizzy spells in space. At the time, NASA doctors attributed the problems to the crew’s unusually heavy work load and lengthy time on the moon.

To keep heartbeats steady on Apollo 16, NASA had the astronauts drink orange juice loaded with potassium. The result? They passed so much gas that Commander John Young said it was a good thing they didn’t have to light a match.

A Mir cosmonaut wasn’t so fortunate in 1987. The 35-year-old flight engineer developed arrhythmia, but on-board medicine did not help and he returned to earth sooner than planned. When he landed, no serious heart trouble was found. Another cosmonaut on another mission in the late 1980s developed a urological inflammation, and the whole crew came back early.

It wasn’t so much the inflammation but rather the cosmonaut’s mental state that prompted the hasty return, Russian doctors say.

And in the late 1970s, a crew cut short its mission for what Russian doctors simply termed “psychological factors.” NASA’s top doctor, Arnauld Nicogossian, suspects some of those conditions could have been detected before flight and thus prevented early returns. No US space mission has ever been cut short for medical reasons, although ill and even potentially ill astronauts have delayed launches and been bumped before flight.

Most famously, Ken Mattingly was dropped from the crew of Apollo 13 after he had been exposed to the measles.