Short Wave - Making Space Travel Accessible For People With Disabilities

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

This week NASA released some of the sharpest images of space ever from the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope's camera gives us a glimpse into distant galaxies and a picture of the makings of our universe. Tomorrow, we'll nerd out about those photos. But today, we're revisiting the idea of space travel. This encore episode, science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel talks to New York Times Disability Reporting Fellow Amanda Morris about one organization working to ensure disabled people have the chance to go to space.You can always reach the show by emailing [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, shortwavers. Emily Kwong here. So for the past day, I have been going gaga over those gorgeous images released by NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope. They're the sharpest images of space ever released, giving us a glimpse into distant galaxies and a picture of the makings of our universe. It's super cool stuff. We're going to delve into those pictures tomorrow. But today, we're going to revisit this episode on space travel and how one organization is working to ensure that. that disabled people have the chance to go to space. All right, enjoy. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. When Apurva Varia was in the ninth grade, he was watching the television, and the way he describes it, he saw all these people in like orange spacesuits sitting on this vessel, and then he's seeing this countdown of 10, 9, 8,

and then he saw stuff coming out of the bottom of the rocket, and then all of a sudden the rocket shoots up into the sky and disappears. And he was like, wait, where did they go? That's Amanda Morris with the New York Times. And she says Apurva was amazed by what he was seeing on TV, except he kind of didn't know exactly what he was watching. Because at the time, remember this is, you know, decades ago, there was no captions on his TV.

So he could see what was going on, but he didn't really know what was actually happening because he couldn't hear the narrator. What a poor Vasa was a crew of astronauts heading into space. And he was like, I want to go to space and I want to be an astronaut. So he immediately wrote a letter to NASA and he learned everything he could about space. But then... He got a letter back. It was a big envelope. There was a letter inside that said,

Thank you for writing. And unfortunately, we can't accept death astronauts right now. but maybe we can in the future. Despite this letter, he wasn't deterred from making space a big part of his life. So he went on and earned advanced engineering degrees and then went on to work for NASA. He has directed space missions

and helped design propulsion systems for satellites. So he's a pretty big deal at NASA, and he was a mission director for three different spacecrafts. And after working behind the scenes for over two decades, this past October, Apurva did something that might provide an opportunity for other people with disabilities like him to go to space. Last October, Aperva got as close as you can get to space without going to space. He got to go on a flight that mimics zero gravity.

And when I talked to Aperva before the flight, he was so excited. He was like, oh, my God, like, I'm finally going to get to see what it's like to float around and do all these things that all these astronauts have always done, that, you know, he's seen all these astronauts do this. He's worked with astronauts, but he's never gotten to do it himself. So today on the show, as spaceflight inches closer to becoming a reality for some private citizens, Amanda Morris, the New York Times Disability Reporting Fellow, shares why one organization wants to ensure that people with disabilities have the chance to go as well.

I'm Jeff Brumfield, and you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. Okay, Amanda, so this past year, we've seen some private citizens actually make it to space through these companies funded by billionaires. I'm talking about SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin. And your reporting focuses on another organization called Astro Access. In October, they conducted this experimental flight. Tell me about the group and the mission.

So Astro Access is a nonprofit initiative that's trying to make. spaceflight accessible to all. And they argue that this is critical to do now while private spaceflight is starting to open up rather than waiting until later because time and time again, what we've seen is that if you think about people with disabilities from the get-go and you design spacecraft and you design protocols that includes them, it's a lot easier and cheaper to implement those tools than it is to retrofit spacecraft to accommodate people later. And this is critical right now because currently the federal aviation administration is prohibited from creating safety regulations for these private spacelights until October 2023. So the hope of Astro Access is that

they can do this research now and then use that research to inform the federal aviation administration so that they don't make rules that prohibit people from disabilities from going to space. Because that's the big worry is that if we don't do any research to prove that people with disabilities can go to space, the federal aviation administration might just follow what NASA has done since the 1960s and might just say, oh, it isn't going to be safe for people with disabilities to go to space. Right. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the current rules for space travel for people with disabilities, at least in the case of the U.S. How has NASA treated disabilities in the past? Yeah, since the 1960s, NASA has really restricted who can become an astronaut to people with the

quote unquote, right stuff, right? So we're talking about white physically fit men at first. And then later they brought in the criteria to include women and people of color, but they still never included people with disabilities. But I think it could be a possibility in the future because the European Space Agency has already announced that they will be accepting astronauts who have leg amputations or who are especially short and that they hope to expand in the future to include more types of disabilities. So I think this could change. And if private space play shows that people with disabilities can go to space,

then perhaps NASA will consider changing their criteria as well. Right. I mean, this past September, Haley Arsino, a childhood cancer survivor, did make it onto a private flight. She has a metal bone in her leg, and that made her the first person with a prosthesis to get into orbit. And I guess that really emphasized the reason for doing something like Astro Access right now, right? I mean, this sort of feels like a moment where things could change.

Yes. She went into orbit with Space X in September during the Inspiration 4 flight. And if you just check out her Twitter or anything, she's posted all sorts of pictures. And it's really cool. And I was very jealous. And it's interesting because other space companies, such as Virgin Galactic, said that they are considering people who have prosthetics, hearing impairments, paralysis, or other medical and physical conditions. and disabilities to go into space. And essentially, they're going to consider people with disabilities on a case-by-case basis and consider creating or making accommodations for them.

But when I reached out to Blue Origin, another space company, the one that's owned by Jeff Bezos, they said in a statement that passengers must meet a list of requirements. And these requirements included a certain height and weight range. They included being able to walk quickly over uneven surfaces, see and respond to alert lights, hear and understand instructions, and reliably follow instructions provided over a radio speaker or alert lights. So as you can imagine, requiring people to walk, hear things, and see things would automatically restrict who is able to go on their flights. So Astro Access is really hoping to change that and allow people with disabilities onto their

flight. So let's talk about this astro-axis flight. This wasn't an actual space flight. Just describe to me what the mission is, how it works. Basically, the plane itself goes up and down in repeated arcs. You get about 20 to 30 seconds of weightlessness. So this could be zero gravity, or this could be lunar gravity, or this could be Martian gravity. And essentially, lunar gravity is about one-sixth of of Earth's gravity and Martian gravity is about one third of Earth's gravity. And they only have 15 tries to go float around and then get back to your seat. Because on a suborbital flight, you fly up and you go to space, but you only go to space for a few minutes. And then you've got to get back to your seat before the spacecraft goes back down into the atmosphere of the Earth.

And this is really important for safety. So essentially, they wanted to see, you know, can somebody who is paralyzed from the ways down get back to their seat? Or can somebody who's blind get back to their seat? And they found that, yeah, they could. The flight had a roughly 90% success rate, which is pretty high and pretty successful if you consider the fact that this is their first time doing it. But essentially, people with disabilities are really used to navigating and getting around in lots of different ways. And in space, you need to have that type of flexible mindset, and you need to be ready to handle a lot of different challenges. And people with disabilities have handled challenges their whole lives.

Yeah. I mean, it really came across in your article that they had this flexibility and adaptability that was a real strength in that kind of environment. I could see that. So, Amanda, what else did we learn from the Astro Access Experimental flights? I guess there's a few things. They were testing out a lot of different things. They were testing specially modified flight suits. They were testing special lighting systems for deaf people.

They were testing ultrasonic or haptic, which is a vibrating device. So they were basically just testing all this stuff to see what people with disabilities may or may not need. And I think one of the biggest takeaways was that they don't need that much. A lot of the people I talked to, including the ambassadors themselves, said, oh, we thought we were going to need this. And we thought we were going to need that. But really, we just needed, like, what we use anyway. So, for example, one of the blind ambassadors, Mona, told me that, you know, they had her testing an ultrasonic device that would give her a signal when she got closer to her seat and a haptic device that vibrated when she got close to, like, a wall or some other edge. And she didn't really use those as much as she used her extendable cane, right?

And that's just because she already knows how to use the cane. And it was a pretty simple adjustment. And a lot of the things they were testing were actually pretty simple modifications that if you added them in now, would not be that difficult to add in and would enable a lot of people with disabilities to be able to do this safely. When I talked to Operva, he talked about how he was trying to do sign language with somebody else. But he was floating upside down and the other person was spinning the other way. and it was just kind of hard to keep track of what the signs were. So he was saying, oh, if we could have just strapped our seals in somewhere, that would have been useful. And that is something that you can imagine would be useful to somebody with or without a disability.

So the last thing I wanted to ask you, Amanda, I mean, of course, most people, disabled or otherwise aren't in space. They're on Earth. and most of the challenges that disabled people will encounter are here on Earth. So is there a reason, you think, to focus on space right now? Is there a reason to sort of turn our attention there, potentially at the cost of trying to improve things here on the ground? A lot of innovations that NASA has come up with for space have ended up being really important on Earth, too.

Things like lightweight metal alloys that are used, on wheelchairs, right? Or things like monitoring devices and medical devices that now get used in hospitals across the country and across the world on Earth, right? So I think another big thing we learned from this is that if you send people with disabilities into space, we have the potential to make new discoveries that could lead to new innovations that are useful both on space and on Earth. And it could be useful for everybody, and it could be especially useful for people with disabilities.

There's this principle called universal basic design. And it's this idea that if you design something to be accessible for everybody, then it will be kind of this perfect design that's useful for anybody, right? So if you design a building that is accessible to somebody in a wheelchair, it's also going to be accessible to somebody who is carrying a heavy box or pushing a baby stroller or anything else, really?

Like you break your leg or, you know, everybody has different reasons why they might be able to use a ramp or an automatic door opener. So I think space has always really captured the imagination in that way, right? And if we can see people with disabilities going to space,

imagine how that might inspire somebody to know that they really can do anything. Thank you, Amanda. I have really enjoyed this conversation. I've really enjoyed talking with you as well. This episode was produced by Thomas Liu, edited by Giselle Grayson, and fact-checked by Margaret Serino. The audio engineer for this episode was Leo Del Aguila. Thanks for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.