While other space ventures folded because investors could not be convinced of the benefits they would reap, space medicine was a shoo-in for funding. The cost/benefit argument for any human effort in space became worthless if an astronaut's safety and health in space could not be assured. In the Soviet Union and in the United States, laboratories and institutes dedicated to studying the debilitating effects of microgravity emerged as space medicine became big business.
At the Institute for Biomedical Research, Soviet scientists developed and tested anti-nausea medication to combat space sickness, and cosmonauts were suspended in water for weeks at a time to simulate weightlessness. In American labs, scientists undertook bed rest experiments to study bones and muscles deprived opposing the force of gravity. Subjects volunteered to remain bedridden for 17 weeks to help scientists devise techniques for counteracting the deterioration that astronauts may experience in space.
Space medicine enterprises went beyond outlining exercise programs for tours of duty in space. As an expanding business, space medicine developed ways to study, on Earth, a body's reaction to space, a new venture that opened the door to multibillion dollar, international dreams of longer term space adventures.
