We talked a bit in class on Tuesday about what would happen to someone’s body if he were to spend too long in space. His bones would start deteriorating, his muscles would get weaker, and his body would produce less blood as he adjusts to zero G. I was reminded while we were talking about this in class of a book I read by Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves. The book took place at a time when mankind had already colonized the moon. However, although people born on Earth could easily travel to the moon and back, people who were born on the moon could not. They would just crumple up and die, their bodies too unaccustomed to the Earth’s gravity. I thought it would be interesting to do some research on the topic and what I found was that no one really knows what would happen.
However, I did find a diagram which showed the rate of bone loss per part of body for every month that someone spends in zero G gravity. Assuming that a baby born on the moon would not just immediately perish, it seems as if the baby would be born with an immensely low bone density compared to a human on Earth, just because it wouldn’t need as much to support its own body. If the human were one day introduced to Earth gravity all of a sudden, it is easy to see that the shock of experiencing a constant gravity of 6x greater than normal would cause it to shut down, especially considering that the heart would probably not be strong enough to pump blood up to the brain any more.
