Aviation and Space Medicine

Aviation and space medicine: ensuring flight safety and crew life support

Aviation and space medicine are areas of medicine that deal with ensuring flight safety and life support for crews during flight. Aviation medicine deals with medical selection and re-examination of flight personnel, studying the influence of flight factors on the human body and developing measures to eliminate or minimize them. Space medicine is engaged in the development of life support systems in flight and methods for adapting astronauts to conditions of weightlessness and other influences inherent in space flights.

The origins of aviation medicine are associated with the intensive development of aeronautics in the 19th century. Aeronauts faced adverse factors such as changes in barometric pressure and low oxygen levels in the surrounding atmosphere, and they had to study their effect on the human body and learn how to eliminate adverse effects. With the advent of aviation at the beginning of the 20th century, aviation medicine began to develop more intensively.

Aviation medicine includes several sections. Aviation physiology studies the influence of flight factors on the human body, aviation hygiene studies the influence of environmental conditions on the human body in flight, aviation psychology studies human psychological reactions during flight training and in various flight conditions, and medical examination of flight personnel develops standards for selection and re-examination flight crew. To study the impact of various factors on the human body in aviation, special devices are used, such as pressure chambers, catapults, centrifuges and laboratory aircraft.

Space medicine arose as a separate field of medicine in connection with the development of space flights. It uses materials accumulated by aviation medicine, but also has its own specific methods and life support systems in flight. When flying into space, a person is faced with factors such as dynamic weightlessness and physical inactivity, that is, a reduced load on the muscular system. To solve these problems, appropriate devices are being developed on board spacecraft and stations, such as simulators for maintaining muscle mass and physical fitness, devices for creating and maintaining artificial gravity, etc.

Space medicine also deals with issues of life support for astronauts in flight and the development of life support systems on board spacecraft and stations. These systems include devices for providing oxygen, water and food, air and water purification systems, waste disposal systems, etc. In addition, space medicine is developing methods for adapting astronauts to conditions of weightlessness and other factors inherent in space flights.

In general, aviation and space medicine play an important role in ensuring flight safety and crew life support. Thanks to the development and application of appropriate methods and technologies, it is possible to ensure the work of flight personnel in conditions that are not always favorable to human health.