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NASA
In this file photo from October 1997, STS-86 Mission Specialist Scott Parazynski gets assistance from a suit technician in making adjustments to his launch and entry suit in the Operations and Checkout Building. Parazynski retired from NASA in 2009 and now is helping medical researchers build diagnostic tools. One goal is a Star Trek-like tricoder.
A former NASA astronaut known for his on-the-fly innovations aims to help a research hospital create diagnostic tools akin to the medical tricorder made famous on "Star Trek."
The medical tricorder is a fictional device that can scan a person to diagnose diseases and injuries. It has long fascinated Scott Parazynski, who last flew space shuttle Discovery in 2007 to the International Space Station and used in-house materials to fix a tear in the station's solar array.
Parazynski retired from NASA in 2009 and recently took a job as the chief medical and technology officer for the Methodist Hospital Research Institute in Houston where he plans to help investigators obtain funding and use the best technologies to meet their needs.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, he said he's most interested helping create the next generation of minimally invasive surgery and diagnostic tools. Inspiration, he noted, comes partially from Star Trek tech.
"As a physician growing up and watching Star Trek, we all wanted a medical tricorder," he told the paper. "So one of the things I'd love to do is think big and push the envelope on what is possible."
Attempts to build real-world tricorders have been made in the past. For example, Boris Rubinsky and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley reported in 2008 on a tricorder-like device that couples handheld medical scanners and cell phones to detect tumors.
There's also an international push among biologists to develop handheld devices to read the "DNA barcodes" of species out in the field. This could, for example, help protect endangered species and thwart the illegal trafficking of wildlife.
Tip O' the Log to OnOrbit
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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I want the holodeck myself, skip the tricorder!
Call me a skeptic on this. I'm a Trek fan from way back and I'd love to see tricorder-like devices, but when medical science of 2011 can't even provide me a reasonable way to check my blood glucose level non-invasively, well... I'm not going to hold my breath on tricorders.
Trek Fan,
On the blood glucose meter, I recall a couple of years back seeing a wrist worn device about the size of a pack of smokes (or a really big watch) which monitored your glucose leves via a pair of sensors that rested on your wrist area, furnishing an almost "real time" readout of your glucose level. The downside was that the sensors (about the size of quarters) had to be replaced every 12 hours. Perhaps this concept has been improved upon?
Gravity on ships. Hurry up and do it, scientists.
Make a replicator first, then use that to make a tricorder.
I would love a replicator. Order up a meal, then put your dirty dishes on it and they beam away so their molecules can be recombined into a cool fantasy outfit to wear on the holodeck running a "Lord of the Rings" program.
A replicator and a holodeck hooked up to the internet, I would never leave home. LOL
"Beam me up Scotty" - that were the most fantastic words on the original series of Star Trek.
I would certainly most like the "transporters".
However, I think it's going to be a very huge task to make that possible.
The android phone to a microscope accessory was a nice idea, the SF concept in startrek is vague since the fictional niche has really narrowed, it is almost fathomable to have a handheld spectrophotometer, spectometer, and I am sure for enough cash a lot of labs can already make you a handheld spectrum analyzer of any sort right up to terrahertz radiation wavelegths...dna readers?...maybe some kind of protron spin marker cheat, but really, pch is about the best we got down here...as for listning to heartbeats or internal noises remotely? yea, we got that, a cheap android app+accesories might be marketable though...good thing jobs ain't readin this, YEA!! I am cloaked beneath the ms-nbc moniker!!...could never be happier!!...maybe allen might get wind though and realize there is money in med....hmmm...better hurry up scott!! I think there are sharks in the water!!..and they smell fresh green money!!
I would love the freedom space travel offers. Don't like the planet, go to another one. I would leave the @!$%#ty planet in a heart beat.
The best hing I got out of Star Trek was the idea of peace. Earth was supposedly peaceful during Kirk's time, and they wanted to share/spread that. I know that that will never really happen, as most of humanity sucks $hit.
to quote the bard....the trouble is not in our stars, but in ourselves
Just before a rain storm, my knee aches, and that tells me that I have arthritis.
Everything I ever needed to learn, I learned on Star Trek