A WHOLE BODY CALORIMETER FOR SPACE STATION ASTRONAUTS, GLP-422

IF A SUITABLE DIRECT CALORIMETER SYSTEM WERE AVAILABLE FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF METABOLIC OUTPUTS FROM ASTRONAUTS IN ORBITAL LABORATORIES, IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO BETTER UNDERSTAND SUCH PROCESSES AS CHANGES IN BONE MINERAL CONTENTAND MUSCLE STATUS AND IN THE IMMUNE SYSTEM AS A RESULT OF WEIGHTLESSNESS; IT IS FELT THAT THE METABOLIC TERMS, THAT CAN BE ACCURATELY MEASURED WITH A DIRECT CALORIMETER, WOULD QUANTIFY THE CONTROLLING PROCESSES BEING STUDIED BY NASA MEDICAL SCIENTISTS. GEOSCIENCE PROPOSES TO PREDESIGN TWO CALORIMETER SYSTEMS, ONE WITH A RIGID ENVELOPE AND ONE WITH A NON-RIGID OR DISASSEMBLABLE ENVELOPE, BOTH TO CONSERVE SPACE. THE CONCEPTS WOULD BE ANALYZED MATHEMATICALLY AND ALSO EVALUATED BY SOME LABORATORY VERIFICATION EXPERIMENTS. FINAL DESIGNS WITH BACK-UP DOCUMENTATION WOULD BE DELIVERED TO NASA DESCRIBING THE SYSTEM PERFORMANCES. GEOSCIENCE IS AN R & D FIRM WITH 27 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN HEAT TRANSFER, FLUID FLOW, BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGYAND CALORIMETRY. IT HAS ALSO CONTRIBUTED TO NASA'S PAST ANDCURRENT ZERO GRAVITY R & D PROGRAMS.