After completing my doctoral degree, I accepted a position as a Research Associate in the Cardiology Division at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In this position, I was able to work under the mentorship of Dr. Harold Sandler, chief of the Biomedical Research Division at NASA-Ames on the study of physiological adaptation to varying gravity environments, with development of exercise training and countermeasures for astronauts. The collaboration with Dr. Norman Shumway who performed the first cardiac and heart–lung transplants at Stanford University led to the novel water-immersion experiments that taught us that excretion of antidiuretic hormone due to enlargement of the heart did not require afferent nerve signals from cardiac receptors in the control of spaceflight-induced diuresis [2]. The Stanford–NASA collaboration also provided the opportunity to conduct multiple research studies on the effect of prolonged exposure to bed rest (a ground model used to simulate the physiological effects of microgravity) on the physical work capacity of astronauts. These studies, conducted in the bed rest facility at NASA-Ames under the directorship of Dee O’Hara, were the first to involve comparisons of men and women across a large spectrum of age from 19 to 65 years [3]. The highlight of these investigations was my opportunity to be the lead exercise physiologist in the first US–Soviet collaboration bed rest study in the summer of 1979.