The Perfect Astronaut of the Future Is Changing—Here’s Why It Matters

In the late 1950s, NASA recruited 11 men aged 25-48 for a unique experiment that has today been mostly forgotten. The participants, ​known to history mainly as the “Gallaudet Eleven”​ had one important factor in common: they were all deaf. For most of the next decade, scientists “measured the volunteers’ non-reaction to motion sickness on both a physiological and psychological level,” aiming to improve their understanding of how the body’s senses work when the inner ear doesn’t receive gravitati...