Weightless Workouts

A new fitness machine on the space station brings astronaut exercise into the 21st century

  • By airspacemag.com
  • AirSpaceMag.com, December 31, 2008
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NASA


The Skylab space station of the 1970s had a bicycle ergometer on board. Pete Conrad (shown here after a workout session on the ground in preparation for his 1973 Skylab 2 mission) reported after his flight that even though the bike didn't exercise every muscle (working the calf muscles was especially hard), "It does make you feel good if you can work out twice a day." His Skylab 2 crewmate Joe Kerwin added, "Even just running around [Skylab's] ring lockers or throwing the ball around in the evening for 15 minutes makes you more relaxed."


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Comments (1)

Wow! NASA has it going on! LOL.
Looking at this I can't help to think
how acceptionally cool if people
that were non-astronauts (you know, land-lovers) could have
access to something like this as
an awesome form of physical therapy for those that are striving
hard to regain their health and strength back; maybe call it an ATB
(AN Air Therapy Box). If something
such as this already out there, I'd
like to know; or if someone is
interested in designing such, I'd be
honored to assist, as much as
possible. Who knows maybe in the
future this could cut down many
excuses for not exercising. How
cool would that be?

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