Model of medical supply and astronaut health for long-duration human space flight

Abstract

Planning a safe and productive human space exploration mission involves a dual approach addressing both the health of the vehicle and the crew. The goal of this study was to develop a quantitative model of astronaut health during long-duration space flight and a medical supply demand model in support of such missions. The model provides two outputs, Alphah and Mass of Medical Consumables (MMC), for each set of input parameters. Alphah is an estimate of total crew health and is displayed as a percentage. MMC is a measure of medical consumables expended during the mission and is displayed in units of kilograms. We have demonstrated that Alphah is a function of three scaling parameters, the type of mission, duration of mission, and gender mix of the crew. The type of mission and gender of crew are linked to radiation fatality data published by NASA. Mission duration is incorporated into the model with predicted incidence of illness and injury data published on US Navy submarine crews. MMC increases non-linearly with the number of crew, the duration of the mission and the distance of the mission away from Earth. This article describes the relationships between these parameters and discusses implications for future crewed space missions.