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t m c » p u l s e | n o v e m b e r 2 0 1 5 22 I n the opening scene of the movie Gravity, long before George Clooney's character (spoiler alert) drifts off into the boundless intergalactic unknown forever, he and a biomedical engineer played by Sandra Bullock are in the midst of upgrading a component on the Hubble Space Telescope. Dressed in spacesuits modeled after NASA's own Extravehicular Mobility Units, or EMUs, the scene is made realistic by the awkward, rigid movements one B y A l e x a n d r a B e c k e r One Giant Leap In an unprecedented collaboration, Houston Methodist teams up with NASA to care for Space City's most valuable players would expect when insulated beneath 14 layers of life-preserving fabrics and gadgets. While the sheer heft of the EMU spacesuit has proven highly suc- cessful in its many missions protecting human skin from the vacuum of space, it hasn't come without its costs—namely those of the musculoskeletal variety. To address these issues, NASA enlisted the help of Patrick McCulloch, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital and, as of a 2012 Congress-backed Space Act Agreement between NASA and Houston Methodist, the official orthopedic consultant for the Johnson Space Center. It turns out astronauts launch a relatively high number of complaints relating to back, knee and shoulder injuries compared to the general population—so many that it seemed advantageous to bring an orthopedic specialist onto their team of physicians—known as flight surgeons— certified athletic trainers and ASCRs (astronaut strength, conditioning and rehabilitation specialists). Each Wednesday, McCulloch's team travels to the Johnson Space Center to provide orthopedic consultation and care to members of the astronaut corps. The onsite clinic is managed by NASA flight surgeon Rick Scheuring, D.O., who, in a previous life, worked as a small-town family practice sports medicine doctor in Northwest Illinois. On the evening of 9/11, he went for