How space travel is changing the history of medicine

The private space boom

Space, the final frontier, is gradually opening up to (wealthy) mortals.

In 2022, four private individuals are expected to embark on the “AX-1” journey to the ISS for the first time. NASA is working with the space startup Axiom Space on this ambitious endeavor. The Washington Post reported in January that ticket prices clocked in at $55m each. It is the beginning of a potentially longer collaboration that will culminate with the controlled descent of the ISS into the Pacific Ocean in 2030.

Why it matters

Granted, the message may seem out of place in a MedTech publication. But as is so often the case, the really interesting news is in the details.

First, two of the astronauts are collaborating with the Montreal Children's Hospital as well as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic to conduct scientific experiments.

Secondly, the announcement is characteristic of large-scale technology projects whose side benefits are almost as important as the actual purpose.

Space is not a fruitless, low-return government expenditure. The high scientific-technical demands of space travel have stimulated a wealth of new discoveries in a wide variety of fields.

The NASA project SPINOFF, for example, lists more than 2,000 applications that were initiated by NASA's space projects including a wide variety of medical use cases: The technology underpinning CAT Scans and MRI machinery is based on NASA research. The space agency has also helped to build a medical device that keeps patients alive while they wait for a heart transplant and has laid the foundations for fiber-optic nerves and biometric sensors. They even built an astronaut-supporting AI that today telemonitors high-risk patients at home. Given these facts, every penny of NASA's $23.3 billion budget seems quite reasonable.