Space Medicine

Medicine

• MED101: First Aid and Field Medicine*
• Introductory course on emergency medical practices.
• MED690: Aerospace Medicine

*required core course.

Star Fleet Academy requires certain courses for all cadets, including First Aid and Field Medicine. I completed my First Aid/CPR certification in 2025 and will renew it next year.

Today, I finished Duke Universities' MOOC: Space Medicine, which is analogous to Aerospace Medicine at the Academy.

The Space Medicine course by Duke University on Coursera explores the health and medical challenges of human space exploration.

Objectives:

• How the human body responds to extreme environments, low pressure, and altered gravity.
• Biomedical, mechanical, and electrical engineering problems in space travel.
• The history of aviation medicine and challenges of long-duration space habitation, including Martian medicine.
• Multidisciplinary prevention of space-related health issues.

Course Structure:

The curriculum spans 6 modules covering topics from the history of medicine in aviation to the realities of sustaining life on Mars:

• History of Medicine and Aviation
• Out of Thin Air
• The Price of Leaving
• Extremes of Acceleration
• Breaking Points
• Martian Medicine

Grade: 91% A