NASA will pay you US$18,000 to stay in bed for 70 straight days..
Every teenager / uni student / human being's dreams can now come true: you can get paid to sleep. A NASA study is recruiting volunteers to to lie in a downwards-tilting bed for some 'head down bed rest'. Subjects who complete the entire bed rest project (70 days, 24 hours a day) can earn up to $18,000 ($1,200 per week for a total of 15 weeks, which includes pre- and post-testing periods).
NASA hopes to find out how much body function is required for astronauts to complete a specific task. Since there is no gravity in space, astronauts don't exert as much effort and might not get the necessary exercise they need to stay in shape.
'Head down bed rest' is explained properly in the NASA report:
NASA scientists are working to find ways to keep astronauts healthier and safer when they spend a long time in space. Head down bed rest is a good way to mimic a person traveling in space without gravity. Head-down bed rest helps researchers study people on earth in a way that causes some of the changes the body goes through while traveling in space without gravity. This study will show how much your body, tilted down slightly with head down and feet up, for 70 days, 24-hours a day, without getting out of bed, except for limited times for specific tests, is like an astronaut’s body during the weightlessness of space flight. Watching you will help scientists learn how an astronaut’s body will change in weightlessness during space flight in the future.
If you want to take a shower, in order to ensure that you remain at a six-degree head tilt at all times, you have to use a specially modified shower gurney, which could be weird. However, as you'll be lying in bed, and not neccesarily sleeping the whole time, you're still welcome to use your phone, read, even answer emails if you can work remotely. Because nobody actually really sleeps anymore, do they?
The experiment's going down at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Our US friends can register here. Ironically, they don't want lazy people: "Couch potatoes is not an accurate description for what we are looking. Subjects need to be very healthy,” NASA’s news chief, Kelly Humphries told Forbes.
Get in bed, help Cooper save humanity.