Moonwalk therapy for joint replacement patients

An orthopedic patient who cannot walk after a surgery like Knee Replacement, Hip Resurfacing, Hip Replacement can walk comfortably at a fraction of patient's own body weight. This therapy is called Moonwalk Therapy. This work is inspired from NASA's work on Astronauts training.

The patient can walk in a chamber (lower body positive pressure) whose air pressure can be adjusted gradually to put more weight on the joints.The extra buoyancy provided by the positive pressure reduces the stress off the muscles and joints and eases the patient's ability to walk.

---

The Moonwalk therapy was developed by University of California, San Diego, Clinical Physiology Lab.

Weight on other planets (for the scientific mind)

The weight is a measure of the force of gravity pulling the body towards the planet. The weight depends on these 3 things:

• Mass of the body (m₁)
• Mass of the planet on which the body is present (m₂)
• Distance between the body and the center of the planet (d).

The gravity is directly proportional to the product of (m₁) and (m₂) and inversely proportional to the distance between the body and the center of the planet (d).
If gravity on the surface of Earth is 1.0 the gravity on the other planets surface are:

Jupiter = 2.6
Saturn = 1.1
Neptune = 1.1
Earth = 1.0
Venus = 0.91
Uranus = 0.90
Mercury = 0.38
Mars = 0.38
Moon = 0.16
Pluto = 0.07