Sunday, April 8, 2012

Nauseating Education - or - Educational Nausea

The place - AGSOL - Ashton Graybiel Situational Orientation Lab, at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. A group of adults in a basement have been creating rides for decades. What kind of rides? Think amusement park rides without color or sugar coating. Without sun-light or food stands. In this twilight zone several experts research ways to measure, adapt-to and maybe some day avoid this set of phenomena named motion sickness and spatial disorientation.

The time - Monday, March 12th 2012 at 9:30am. Paul McCall, a fellow Astronauts4Hire member and I were the second and third people to go through a new 1.5-day protocol designed to give a person wishing to become a commercial astronaut awareness through exposure to motion sickness, spatial illusions and disorientation. The experience can be described as nauseating education, or more aptly, educational nausea.