Seed funding from NASA: 5K per month for lying down

Are we sure about that? From the Wired Q&A:

"We give them approximately two weeks of recovery time on the unit. We monitor them and give them rehabilitation exercises. That's usually enough to bring them back to normal functioning..." [emphasis mine]

"They will lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone per month. That's not going to come back within two weeks. So, we bring them back at six months and then a year later to look at their bone density...

"What we tell people is that they will lose bone and it may never return to their prestudy levels. It's entirely possible, but a significant number [of people] do return to their normal density..." [emphasis mine]

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Hmm, malaria plus some chance of recurrent malaria, vs loss of muscle tone requiring physical therapy plus potentially permanent loss of bone density? Not an easy call, really.

At least their simulation of space travel doesn't include the cosmic radiation or the risk of explosive decompression.

In another post they had an interview with one of the researchers - apparently each of the test persons who comes in should have a goal (one of them was learning a new language). So this might not be so bad an idea after all.