How does the stomach work in space? Do astronauts feel constant need to throw up since the contents are bouncing around inside?
In: Biology
I can delete if want, but just curious…how many rockets failed entering space, crossing the van allen belt or other hurdles…. how many Astronauts died in testing? How many ships blew up ?
I seen that a couple test flights flew by the moon , orbits around the moon a few flights.
Or did we just in the mid 60s build a Toys R Us looking ship and on first try made landed on the moon, landed, launched off moon and landed on earth on first tries hahaha
In very simple words
stomach is bag, belly squish bag to push stuff into other bags, no extra non squish space
So does having a hiatal hernia mean I cannot be an astronaut!?
Do you start vomiting when lying in your bed? Gravity is no longer pulling your ingested food down, is it?
Only if you have problems with the muscles on top of your stomach, which is called acid reflux. The contents of the stomach are held down by muscles, not by gravity.
It’s important to realize there’s no relative acceleration in space and that lack of relative acceleration results in no relative forces. (The food in your stomach isn’t exerting a force on your body and vice versa)
If you ate something and stood up, the food is pulled down on your stomach at a force equal to its weight. If you ate something and then did a handstand, it’s being pulled (up relative to you) at at a force equal to its weight. This may be unpleasant which is where the question probably comes from.
However, in space there is no relative acceleration between you and the food in your stomach. Therefore, there are no real forces pulling the food out of your stomach.
Do we throw up every time someone does a cartwheel? Your stomach is capable of withstanding being upside down, on your side. It’s contained
Think of the stomach like a muscular water balloon with two ends being held shut. The ends are held shut with muscles like your butt hole called sphincters. When it’s empty, it’s “deflated,” and when you fill it, it expands to hold the solids or liquids you put in it. If you were to hang upside down on earth, the upper sphincter keeps the stuff in. Just like in space, the sphincters hold it all in. During digestion, the stomach muscles expand and contract to squish and mix the stuff inside. When it’s broken down the foods enough, the lower sphincter opens and the stomach muscles squeeze the stuff out to move it along to the next stage of digestion, like letting go of the end of a water ballon, it will squeeze it all out. Think of squishing and shaking a water balloon. There’s not much open space in your stomach, unless you ingest a lot of gas, for stuff to “bounce around,” and your stomach contents are always being squished and mixed. Though gravity can help, digestion doesn’t rely on it to work. The muscular action the body uses to move liquids and solids through it is called peristalsis and is why we can eat,l and drink while upside down or laying down.
If you did feel like vomiting in space, it would likely be an issue called space sickness, which is a form of motion sickness where your visual system and your vestibular system tell your brain two different things about your motion. But that’s another ELI5
And what about farts!? This has plagued me for a long time. How does the gut release gas in 0G? Full disclosure, I don’t really understand how it does it down here. Life is full of mysteries
Most people can hang upside-down without puking. The human digestive tract is lined with muscles that keep everything in place and moving in the right direction. If you can physically keep from puking at -1G (by your frame of reference) then you can certainly keep your lunch down in 0G.
Going beyond your question though, space sickness happens because the bones and fluid in your inner ear that determine your orientation float around. You can have the ceiling as your frame of reference as “up” and then a small shift causes your inner ear to register it as down, left up, behind. You get nauseated from that and you puke.
Space sickness is a common side effect of micro-gravity. Vomiting is controlled more by the ear than the stomach. It is when what the eyes see doesn’t match what the ears are experiencing. Space sickness is similar to all motion sickness. Your eyes see that you are moving while your ear registers you are standing still. Most astronauts experience this for the first few days up to week in space. The space program usually selects people less prone to this for space flight.
I know you didn’t ask, but I find this stuff fascinating. The real bodily function problem of micro-gravity is defecating. Gravity is the main force to separate stool from the anus. Early astronauts had to use their hands and a bag to separate stool. Now most spaceships have a vacuum.
Edit: Reversed eyes/ears.
>Space sickness is a kind of motion sickness that can occur when one’s surroundings visually appear to be in motion, but without a corresponding sense of bodily motion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_adaptation_syndrome
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