I was thinking about the Nutty Putty Cave incident and how one of the things that contributed to the urgent need for rescue was that the diver was upside down. He had hours.
Meanwhile, people have spend months, years in space. If we’re so sensitive to gravity, how can we deal so well when we remove it completely?
In: Planetary Science
Being upside down and being in a 0-g environment aren’t the same thing. In a 0-g environment your blood isn’t pooling in your head, but if you watch videos of astronauts on ISS you will notice their heads are puffier since their hearts which are used to pumping blood to their heads under 1 g now have a much easier time doing it under 0 g’s.
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/astronaut-lingo-puffy-head-bird-legs
Blood flow can be affected by gravity. When you’re upside down, too much blood rushes too your brain. Eventually this kills you. In space without gravity, your blood circulation is only dependent on your cardiovascular system, so it doesn’t matter what position you’re in
My understanding is that space does actually impact people negatively as well. The astronauts on the ISS have to work out at least two hours a day to minimize bone density loss, muscle atrophy, and cardio problems. The body was made to work with a little bit of resistance.
IIRC some of the work they do up there includes studies being done on the best ways to counteract these effects so that people don’t suffer as many long term problems if we were to send them out for years at a time for longer missions.
Microgravity is actually very bad for the human body. It leads to blood pooling in the head and face (although to a lesser extent than when upside down, since there’s no gravity adding to the effect)
Nausea, low apetite, poor digestion, muscle and skeletal atrophy, brain fog, insomnia. Astronauts on long duration space flights have to exercise frequently just to slow down the rate at which their body atrophies.
There’s also substantial radiation exposure outside of the magnetosphere leading to increased incidence of cancers, as well as high energy cosmic rays causing visual flashes and temporary partial blindness.
Basically, being in microgravity is like having the flu 24/7. And many of these effects take weeks or months to recover from once returning to normal gravity. Its why the crew of the ISS has to be regularly rotated.
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