In what looks like an athletic, gravity-defying fight scene from 'The Matrix,' Harvard students So-One Hwang '05 (center) and Manoj Ramachandran '04 experience weightlessness during their once-in-a-lifetime experience at NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

In July, with help from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), four Harvard students lost weight - all of it - in just 30 seconds. Along the way, they conducted research that may change emergency medical protocols for future space missions.

The students - the Extension School's Mario Garcia '04 A.L.B., So-One Hwang '05, Lily Kang '03, and Manoj Ramachandran '04 - experienced the weightlessness of microgravity through NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, which provides research opportunities for college students aboard its Boeing KC-135A aircraft based in Houston.

The Harvard team proposed to research the effectiveness of a one-person cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) protocol for a weightless environment. The students called it "Single-rescuer Emergency CPR while Unrestrained in Reduced gravity Experiment" (SECURE).

"The whole purpose of our experiment was to show that we can do effective CPR while unrestrained, because it takes too much time to restrain the victim in the crew medical restraint system," says Hwang, who served as the team's captain (see her own description of weightlessness, "Notes from zero gravity").

While the team is still analyzing its data, preliminary indications are that their research will produce solid results that might lead to a change in the way NASA administers emergency medicine in space.

"We are pretty confident, based on our own personal experiences, that we got good data," Hwang says.

The value of the trip needs no further analysis, however.

"It was an experience of a lifetime," says Kang of what she called "The Weightless Wonder Trip."

"We were all very drawn to the fact that we had an opp06ortunity to contribute to science while having fun," Kang adds.

From 'The Matrix' to NASA

Since 1959, NASA has created a weightless, or "zero-g," training and research environment on board its KC-135A. Similar to a commercial Boeing 707 stripped of its seats, the aircraft flies in a series of one-minute parabolic arcs, climbing steeply then descending sharply. Each of these parabolas provides 20 to 30 seconds of nearly zero gravity.

Not surprisingly, this two-hour roller coaster ride at 30,000 feet is nicknamed the "vomit comet."

Several times a year, NASA invites college students to conduct their own weightless research aboard the vomit comet. The Harvard group, which flew July 29 and 30 after more than a week's preparation at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, is the first from the University to participate in the program.

The fliers (Patrick Lenehan '05 joined the team in Houston as an alternate), all members of the Harvard World Tae Kwon Do Federation, learned of the program from their tae kwon do master, Brown University Ph.D. student Peter Lee. Linking tae kwon do and zero-g, Hwang explains, are the high-kicking special effects of "The Matrix." She admits that the opportunity to try such moves free from gravity's pull was a powerful lure.

Lee, who had worked with the NASA program for students before, served as an adviser to the Harvard students. Once they developed their proposal, which focused on emergency medicine, the team also enlisted the advice of Harvard Medical School instructor in medicine Nathan Shapiro.

Weightless CPR

Current NASA standards for CPR are the same as full-gravity treatment, with an elaborate system of restraints required to stabilize the weightless victim and two rescuers. But the restraints take five life-threatening minutes to deploy, Hwang says; further, two-rescuer CPR on a three-person space flight would leave no one at the controls.

The Harvard team aimed to improve on both elements of the NASA CPR protocol. They wanted to see if one unrestrained rescuer could deliver effective chest compressions by bear-hugging the victim from behind. And could ventilations, which by existing NASA standards are delivered by the second rescuer, be managed by a single rescuer with the assistance of a medical device?

They used their weightless parabolic arcs to conduct CPR on a mannequin under three conditions: using the current system of restraints, as a control; using an effective but expensive and somewhat esoteric piece of equipment called a Kendall bellows on sternum resuscitation (BSR) device; and using the more common bag valve mask (BVM) for ventilations.

"We thought about the practicality of equipment that NASA would be likely to use," says Hwang, and added the BVM, familiar to viewers of hospital television shows such as "ER," to the experiments at the last minute.

While the fliers did not always reach the recommended chest compression of an inch and a half, their method consistently came close. Two emergency room doctors, says Hwang, confirmed that sacrificing full compression in favor of life-saving minutes is likely a worthy trade-off.

"Starting the treatment right away is better than waiting five minutes to get the full depth of compression," says Hwang, adding that in a real emergency, one crew member could begin unrestrained CPR while another readies the restraints.

NASA, which recognizes the shortcomings of its current CPR protocol, is conducting similar experiments. NASA scientists paid the Harvard group extra attention and asked them to share their data. And the NASA surgeon who prepared them for the flight also had been experimenting with one-person CPR; the fliers used a few of their extra parabolas to try his method, which involved placing the victim's sternum between the rescuer's knees.

"It was really exhausting," says Hwang of the Thighmaster-style CPR, "but it was definitely fun for us to work with somebody right then and there."

To the moon ... or Houston

The trip to zero-g was not without its difficulties. Altering their research at the 11th hour, the team members scrambled around Houston collecting equipment. Before the flight, they worked in a hangar with no air-conditioning to buffer them from the hot, humid Houston July. And for several of the participants, the "vomit comet" lived up to its name.

But for that hour of parabolas over the Gulf of Mexico, says Hwang, nothing else mattered.

"We were just living in the moment," she says. "It happened so fast. We were so focused on getting our data."

When the students return to Harvard this fall, they'll share their experiences with students here. They have registered to create an official Harvard club with an eye toward future NASA experiments.

They'll also present their work to would-be young scientists at Boston's Museum of Science. Although the flyers are pursuing careers and concentrations from linguistics to urban planning, "we all said that [being an astronaut] was something we wanted to try as children," says Hwang, who adds that her own dreams of space died when she got glasses in the fifth grade. She hopes their presentation will encourage young people to aim for the stars, or at least for Houston.

"Most people think it's either the moon or nothing," she says. "Careers in space are definitely more accessible than people think."

beth_potier@harvard.edu