Almost every area of medicine has benefited from the space programme. Yet because Britain is alone in the developed world in turning its back on investing in this research, few people are aware that we have space research to thank for modern cancer detection and treatments, ultrasound techniques, and devices like pacemakers and heart pumps.

All these advances arose as spin-offs into research on how to protect astronauts from solar radiation, transmit data, monitor bodily functions and miniaturise vital equipment.

Much of this research is about to be reviewed by the British scientific and medical establishment. This is partly because of the suggestion that a manned British space programme might combat the plummeting level of interest in life sciences among schoolchildren, and also because of a growing recognition that medical research for space travel is highly relevant to health care as practised by family doctors.

‘Trying to solve the problems of sending humans into space is hugely beneficial,’ says Alyson Calder, an anaesthetist from Glasgow Royal Infirmary who founded the growing UK Space Medicine Association. ‘We can see the pathways of human body malfunctions in a different way, and it helps us think of new approaches to treating them.’

Her colleague Kevin Fong, an intensive-care specialist with a degree in astrophysics as well as one in medicine, has set up Britain’s first space-medicine course at University College London. He says doctors have a unique contribution to make because they see people in hospital suffering the same sorts of problems as astronauts. ‘There are fundamental questions to answer, like why stress in some conditions is fatal, but not in others. You can have explorers with such low blood oxygen levels that they should be dead, and we don’t understand why.’

As Britain deliberates over whether to join European Space Agency (ESA) human research projects, specialists in Britain pursuing research into space medicine are clamouring for help to finance investigations they argue will provide immediate benefits on Earth. Little over a decade ago, for example, ‘bed rest’ was still prescribed for any number of complaints. Studies on astronauts showed this was almost as bad an idea as the blood-letting prescribed by medieval physicians.

People forced to undergo prolonged immobility in space suffered a life-threatening loss of muscle bulk and strength, just like patients confined to bed.Astronauts’ bones rapidly develop the porous, brittle quality of the bones of people with advanced osteoporosis. Bone loss begins after a few days in space. Without treatment, an astronaut landing on a new planet after a long trip would immediately fall over and break a hip.

One of the scientists at the forefront of this research is Marco Narici, professor of the physiology of ageing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a research-strategy adviser to ESA. ‘Damage to tissues in astronauts is telling us enormous amounts about functioning, performance and susceptibility to disease,’ he says. A spin-off of Narici’s research is the discovery that physical fitness can be restored even in old age. Light exercise by a fit 80-year-old can produce the muscle strength of a sedentary 20-year-old.

Much of the ESA’s medical research is targeted at the problem of how to keep astronauts alive and healthy for the three years it would take to get to Mars and back. Another element of the project is the link between stress and susceptibility to disease. Alexander Chouker, an anaesthetist specialising in intensive-care medicine at Munich University, has ESA funding to investigate this effect. Stress hormones and other biomarkers in blood samples from astronauts doing six-month tours of duty at the International Space Station are being monitored in a three-year programme. ‘We want to see how the immune system gets activated because of stress, and how it shuts down,’ Chouker says.

Meanwhile, Nasa experts can produce lists of tens of thousands of medical innovations that are spin-offs from the $8 billion it spends annually on space research. Nasa’s deputy chief scientist, Howard Ross, believes a principal benefit is the remote heart-monitoring systems routinely in use in hospitals, which were developed for astronauts in the 1960s. The fact that one nurse can monitor several patients at once has reduced deaths in cardiac units from nearly 33% of patients to just 7%. ‘Countless people recovering from heart attacks and other serious illnesses owe their lives to this technology,’ he says.

Telemedicine and telesurgery, where patient care and even robot-operated surgical procedures can be delivered remotely, have also come from systems developed to care for personnel aboard the International Space Station, while imaging techniques developed for the Hubble Space Telescope have been adapted to diagnose and treat conditions like breast cancer.

Other Nasa-led breakthroughs include voice-controlled wheelchairs, automated systems for analysing urine, automatic insulin pumps for diabetics, and super-enriched baby foods.

For America at least, the most lucrative spin-off has come from the need to miniaturise devices to make them implantable. Mems (micro-mechanical electrical systems) have become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is awaiting a government response to a report it produced this summer, recommending substantial investment in space research. At the same time, an impressive committee of 22 scientists funded by the British National Space Centre has just come up with the fruits of a nine-month project to argue a new space strategy for Britain, including investment in space medicine. Whether Britain chooses to put some of its still- considerable scientific might into this field remains to be seen.