I guess you could call this a shower thought but out of the blue I thought about this. How does our stomach acids not float up our throats in zero G? I’m not familiar with how our bodies work in space and would love to hear an explanation
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I feel like it’s worth mentioning… space is chalk full of gravity. Working in space and working in orbit are different things. When orbiting, you experience something very close to zero G because you’re in constant free fall towards the earth but gravity is very much there (causing you to do the free falling). It’s about 9/10ths of the gravity you feel standing on the ground, you just aren’t fighting against it like you do on the ground.
It’s the same experience if you’ve ever been on a free-fall amusement park ride like Disney’s guardians of the galaxy. It’s just falling, albeit for a much longer time.
Your stomach, bladder, etc have nice little doors on them, but other fluids generally get pushed “up” towards you head, and can cause problems with vision. NASA uses compression cuffs and a lot of monitoring to keep fluids where they are supposed to be.
From NASA, “human exposure to microgravity results in changes to… renal function, fluid redistribution, bone loss, and muscle atrophy, all of which contribute to an altered urinary environment and the potential for renal stone formation.”
Surprisingly, one of the least worried about things is stomach acid.
This is useful here:
https://www.nasa.gov/content/gravity-who-needs-it/
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