If you spin in a zero gravity / space capsule, will you get dizzy?

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If you spin in a zero gravity / space capsule, will you get dizzy?

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Others have addressed what happens in the inner ear that causes disorientation and dizziness while spinning. There is also visual disorientation which can do the same, as well as many other senses whose cues can get messed up in an environment like space (or, say, at sea), and cause a psychological nausea.

You mention also being in a capsule, which offers another unique set of causes for motion sickness in space. If you imagine something like walking inside the rim of a spinning space station, such as in the film *2001*, you experience artificial gravity (as the force of the station’s “floor” pulling you into circular motion where your momentum wants you to fly tangentially outwards into space). There are three ways such a setup can induce disorientation and motion sickness, assuming the station isn’t freaking gargantuan:

1. Standing upright at the edge of this space station, your feet are moving faster than your head, and are “feeling” more of the artificial gravitational acceleration.

2. Moving in this rotating station (such as taking a jog a la *2001*), your body being tall relative to the size of the station, creates [coriolis forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force).

3. Moving outside the plane of rotation, like tilting your head to the side, just gets wacky (a “cross-coupled coriolis illusion”), and is considered the most significant factor in terms of causing motion sickness.

The good news is that recent research seems to indicate that you can mitigate all this with training and acclimation (so for the purposes of building a space station you don’t need to give it a 100-meter radius, which creates additional problems). [Most convenient source I can find for now on all this, which directs to further reading, is [Bretl et al 2001](https://scholar.colorado.edu/downloads/ng451j715), which also has a [lay magazine writeup](https://www.colorado.edu/today/2019/07/02/artificial-gravity-breaks-free-science-fiction).]

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