纪念加劳德特十一人和他们对航天的贡献
Harold Domich. Robert Greenmun. Barron Gulak. Raymond Harper. Jerald Jordan. Harry Larson. David Myers. Donald Peterson. Raymond Piper. Alvin Steele. John Zakutney.
哈罗德·多米奇。罗伯特·格林蒙。巴伦·古拉克。雷蒙德·哈珀。杰拉德·乔丹。哈里·拉尔森。大卫迈尔斯。唐纳德·彼得森。雷蒙德派珀。阿尔文·斯蒂尔。约翰·扎库特尼。
Before NASA could send humans to space, the agency needed to better understand the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. So, in the late 1950s, NASA and the U.S. Naval School of Aviation Medicine established a joint research program to study these effects and recruited 11 deaf men aged 25-48 from Gallaudet College (now Gallaudet University). Today, these men are known to history as the “Gallaudet Eleven.”
在将人类送入太空之前，NASA需要更好地了解长期失重对人体的影响。因此，在20世纪50年代末，美国宇航局和美国海军航空医学院建立了一个联合研究计划来研究这些影响，并从加劳德特学院（现在的加劳德特大学）招募了11名25-48岁的聋哑人。今天，这些人被历史称为 “加劳德特11人”。
In this image, the study participants chat in the zero-g aircraft that flew out of Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.
在这张图片中，研究参与者在从佛罗里达州彭萨科拉海军航空站起飞的零重力飞机上聊天。
In 2017, Gallaudet University and NASA celebrated the achievements of these little-known pioneers. All but one of the men had become deaf early in their lives due to spinal meningitis, which damaged the vestibular systems of their inner ear in a way that made them “immune” to motion sickness. Throughout a decade of various experiments, researchers measured the volunteers’ non-reaction to motion sickness on both a physiological and psychological level, relying on the 11 men to report in detail their sensations and changes in perception. These experiments help to improve understanding of how the body’s sensory systems work when the usual gravitational cues from the inner ear aren’t available, as is the case in spaceflight.
2017年，加劳德特大学和NASA庆祝了这些鲜为人知的先驱者的成就。除了一个人之外，所有的人都在生命的早期由于脊髓膜炎而失聪，脊髓膜炎破坏了他们内耳的前庭系统，使他们对晕动症“免疫”。在十年的各种实验中，研究人员在生理和心理水平上测量了志愿者对晕动病的无反应，并让11名志愿者详细报告他们的感觉和知觉变化。这些实验有助于提高人们对当通常来自内耳的重力信号无法获得时，身体的感觉系统如何工作的理解，正如太空飞行中的情况。
#NationalDisabilityEmploymentAwarenessMonth
Image Credit: U.S. Navy/Gallaudet University Collection
图片来源：美国海军/加劳德特大学收藏