MAN IN SPACE:

anned flights of longer than
a week may be impossible
With the present sort of space

ed, said Prof, Parin,

Valery Bykovsky and Valen-

Ships, This conclusion has been’™tina Tereshkova also suffered

Teached by both Soviet and Amer-
lCan experts in Space medicine,

The reason is akin tothe effect
of getting up after a long stay

in bed, It is easier for the cosmo- -

Naut to find his spacelegs for a
Weightless flight in space than
for his body to accept the strain
of landing and the pull of gravity
after a long flight,

Weightlessness cau ses the
: €art to funciton more slowly and
its muscle may be weakened, The
heart has less work to do in pump-
ing blood around the body andthe

Mechanism controlling blood is
affected,

* kx

The effects of long space flights
Were discussed at arecent meet-
ing in Florence of the UN-backed
Committee on Space Research

Cospar),

Prof, Vassili Parin, the famous
Physiologist and director of the
Institute of Normal and Patho-
logical Sciences of the Soviet
Academy of Medical Sciences,
Tevealed that weightlessness may
after all be a greater hazard to
‘Cosmonauts than radiation,

The health of Soviet cosmo-
Nauts Andrian Nikolayev and
4vel Popovich was not affected,
but reactions connected with the
fart and blood vessels lasted
Several days,

Their central nervous system.
4nd metabolism were also affect-

R ecently the C,B,C, had an
hour long television program
€aling with the origin of man-
ind, It was interesting, well pre-
Sented and informative—as far as
-4t went, Th omissions were all
in th® field of social conclusions
at various stages of man’s emer-
Sence from the trees,

Now, by sheer chance, a couple
Of weeks before the program was
Presented this reviewer had read
and enjoyed Nesturkh’s “The

aces of Mankind,” Such is the
Value of this book that he was not
nly able to get the most out of
the Program but also able to
SPot the above mentioned omis-

_Slons made by the learned pro-

fessors from London, Yale and
Harvara, f

Quite an achievement—for the
‘Teviewer had little pre-knowl-
®dge of the subject—all of which
Must be chalked up to this book,

_,.Perhaps the above account will
‘llustrate the point that this fine

ttle volume isn’t just “propa-
Sanda” against racism, though
it's this all right, very definitely,

In addition, for those who be-
lieve in“ spreading the good word”
Y Selling extra copies to friends, ©
S appearance makes it a push-
ever, Beautifully produced with
®Mbossed hard cover, eight full-
%e colour plates, dozens of
Tawings and photographs (some
in treble-fold) and glossy paper
Toughout, this appearance is a
Worthy background for the text,

And incidentally, as children
Capitalism, how on earth they
Toduced it to sell here for a

Oar - and-a- half, we'll never
Now!

nervous fatigue, weight-loss and
body chemistry changes after
their record flights last year,

The most disturbing symptom,
experienced also by the Ameri-
cans Walter Schirra and Gordon
Cooper, was low blood pressure,
causing giddiness and nausea,

It was once thought that “astro-
naut’s ear’’ may be a condition
peculiar to the men, Herman
Titov suffered from some pain
and sickness in his 25-hour flight
in 1961 and the Soviet training
program was changed to over-
come his experience,

But pioneer U,S, space flier
John Glenn has been retired from
the American space program and
apparently still’ suffers from
dizzy spells,

So many cosmonauts have suf-
fered from some form of*astro-
naut’s ear” that it now seems
more likely to be a product of
weightless flight than the pecu-
liarity of particular innner ears,

The Americans agreed with the
Russians at Florence and their
space physiologists fear that the
effects of weightlessness on blood
pressure may be proportional to
the length of the flight,

The design of future spacecraft
may be changed so that they ro-
tate to create artificial gravity—
an idea known to the Russian
pioneer Tsiolkovsky and innum-
erable science-fiction writers,

About Races and

It is a scientific book in the
very best sense for you don’t have

to be a professor of any univer- .

sity to understand what this highly
interesting—and highly topical—
Subject is all about after reading
it,

Admittedly, there are perhaps
a dozen terminology words that
most readers will have to look up
in a dictionary and a glossary in
the back explaining their mean-
ing would have been an asset,

But, considering the wide range
of the subject discussed, thisisa
minor criticism indeed and does
not detract from the way the facts
are presented in such a logical
sequence that many conclusions
grow from the reader’s own com-
mon sense,

BOOKS

In a review, quotations are, at
the best, chancy things and atthe
worst thoroughly misleading,

However, perhaps a couple of
quotes dealing with some general
points will give some idea of the
style of the book,

For instance, in discussing
Race and Mentality which seems
to be such a sore point with the
“ But-I-LOVE-the-Negras” Gov-
ernor Wallaces of this world,
Professor Nesturkh has this to
say: “, , , national character and
behavior are conditioned andtake.
shape under the dominant, deter-
mining influence of the social
environment; racial peculiarities
play no role whatsoever in the de-
velopment of (this) activity,”

What is his most

pressing problem?

nee See st ew

U.S. space research has evolved this simulated
rocket cabin, which circles at the end of a huge

-The Americans are already
planning two-week flights with
their two-man Gemini vehicles
and had hoped for a manned
orbiting laboratory by 1967,
where men would spend 30 days
in orbit,

Soviet scientists and spacemen
have predicted longer flights,

At Florence, Prof, Parin sug-
gested a Soviet-American co-
operative program to exchange
information on space medicine,

Sex in space was also discussed
at Florence and it was revealed
that Major Nikolayev had acted
as marriage broker to male and
female fruit flies.

Racism

Again, in the section dealing
with intermarriage, its history
and effects, he sums up as fol-
lows: “Certain groups of anthro-
pological types such as the Arctic
(Eskimo), Pygmy, and Australian
aborigine groups, were for along
period in complete isolation and
this intensified the racial fea-
tures peculiar to them,

“During the last five hundred
years, however, even these com-
paratively isolated groups have
lost their so-called‘racial purity’
so that today there are not really
any ‘pure’ races anywhere,

“The myth of the ‘pure race’ is
an invention of the racists that
contradicts scientific facts, In
any case, the degree of racial
‘purity’, or of mixing of peoples,
never has played any roleintheir
socio-economic and cultural de-
velopment,”

Perhaps some non- expert
readers on the subject will be
surprised to learn thatitis prac-
tically impossible to distinguish
between races from blood analy-
sis and that“, , , not even special-
ists, anthropologists and anatom-
ists, can define the race ofa man
by his brain,

Finally, a friendly word of
“warning,” (if that’s the right
word), to some “progressive”
readers who, by the accident of
their birth, happen to belong to
a white-skinned race, Some of the
surprises in this little master-
piece may prove to be rather
embarrassing!

—John Hope

of actual flight.

In space, he joined two cart-

ridges, one containing male flies:

and the other females. The in-
sects mated and laid eggs while
weightless,

There were delays in hatching
the fruit flies, probably due to
the temperature inside the space-
ship; there was an excessive

number of females from the eggs,
the flies tended to be under-

weight, and various sorts of
freaks developed.

Dr. V, Antipov of the Soviet
Academy of Medical Sciences
thought that these and other ef-
fects on cells he described could
be due to absence of gravity.

Soviet: satellites also carried
seeds, bacteria and different
strains of the single-celled plant,
the pond scum, chlorella.

Only the seeds of onions and
wheat were reluctant to germin-
ate, but some strainsof chlorella
tended to die more quickly than
on earth. :

This could be importantas this
unappetising plant has been suge-
gested asa way to regenerate the
air and feed the crews of space-
ships on long voyages.

These first Soviet reports of

life without weight are fascinat-

os

boom, reproducing some of the physical conditions

ing, and the Americans are now
planning an ambitious program to
follow suit.

The current co-operation of 58
nations in the International Quiet
Sun Year and the first fruits of
Soviet-British- U.S. co-operation
in space communications, using
the Echo satellite, rouse hopes
of further international collabor-
ation,

Two Soviet “runabout” satel-
lites have been launched since
last November, and in January
one rocket was used to orbit
Electrons 1 and 2 to explore
thoroughly the earth’s radiation
belts.

Thirty sputniks have been
launched in the Cosmos Series,
and Zonde-1, the interplanetary
Probe, has had its direction
changed twice on command from
earth. The last time it was eight
million miles away.

The biologists have reported
from space for the first time and
add new zest to the interest ris-
ing this year on what space

_Spectaculars the Soviet Union

Plans to launch,

—John Moss

tama

Soviet cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, in common with all of today’s
spacemen, had to undergo stringent physical examination and tests
before he made his historic flight through space. While in space, he
played midwife to a batch of fruit flies.

August 14, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9