Post-Flight Reconditioning Timeline

Landing is not the end of a spaceflight's physiological toll — it is the start of a weeks-to-months rehabilitation program. This simulator tracks four body systems an astronaut must recover after return: cardiovascular orthostatic tolerance, neurovestibular balance, musculoskeletal strength and bone mineral density, each modeled as its own exponential recovery curve with a time constant drawn from real post-flight reconditioning data. Set the mission's duration, how closely in-flight countermeasures were followed, and the intensity of the post-landing rehab program, then scrub or play forward through R+0 to R+400 days and watch each system's marker advance along its own track in 3D. Because bone recovers far slower than the other three, the simulator's "return to full duty" clearance is gated by whichever of the faster systems is still lagging — the same rate-limiting logic flight surgeons use when clearing a crew member, illustrating why the slowest track in a recovery program, not the average, decides when someone is ready.