Life in Zero-G: Galactic Curiosities
howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com says there are 6 people in space as I write this blog.
This blog is mainly inspired by Mary Roach’s 2010 book, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. In Roach’s book you will find some of the must entertaining information about day-to-day matters in space, from pooping to mating without gravity and more. Roach never fails to amuse her readers, so if you haven’t read her book I highly recommend you do. Now if you’re time constraint then continue reading and allow me to spoil it for you.
Have you ever wonder what it takes to escape planet Earth or why are planets round, especially the huge gas giants? Or “what is the biggest planet in the whole world?” Ok, this last question is a joke but somehow it’s a Google top search, just type: What is the biggest planet… and you’ll see it at the number four spot of top searches. The human mind is truly mesmerizing. As we pose these noble questions we tend to disregard others of equal importance, like how do astronauts poop in space? Is sex in space a possibility? How about gestation and fetal development in space? I mean, as missions get longer we must certainly address questions like this.
So lets start with the boring stuff, what does it take to escape planet Earth? The short answer is 11 miles per second, that is 25,200 miles per hour (11 km per second). For example, if you were to throw your cell phone upward at a velocity of 11 miles per second your phone will break the Earth’s gravitational pull and escape into space, perhaps hitting one of our 2,271 satellites. These same forces that keep us from flying into space are the ones that make our beautiful blue planet nice and round. As you know gravity is pushing against us at all times so why doesn’t this push make Earth collapse on itself? Well, that has to do with hydrostatic pressure or what physicists call pressure gradient, in layman’s terms resistance to compression. What this means is that the materials in Earth (solids, liquids, gases) prevent this collapse by providing resistance to external forces, the same way a basketball doesn’t blow up when you squeeze it with both hands.
You often see people in space shuttles floating around in videos like the one I have shared at the end of this blog; this is due to Zero-G, not to be confused with zero gravity (no gravity). Zero-G is actually a constant free fall (acceleration felt as weight). See everything that orbits something is at a constant free fall. Satellites that orbit the Earth are at a constant free fall towards Earth, and Earth is at a constant free fall towards the Sun. What keeps satellites from showering Earth and us from diving into the Sun is something called tangential velocity (for satellites and the ISS the velocity is 17,000 mph or 28,000 km/h). As centripetal forces pull us towards the bigger object, tangential velocity allows us to miss the target, every single time. In the case of Earth this tangential velocity was left from the formation of our solar system, astrophysicists call it intrinsic momentum. But floating in space isn’t without consequences. Very early in space exploration doctors found that astronauts exhibited a peculiar anatomical anomaly now known as bird leg/puffy face syndrome upon their return. What happens here is that without a gravity gradient the blood pressure equalizes throughout the body and fluid flows from the legs to the head. Besides the funny aspect of this condition, bone degradation has been noted as well, efforts to counteract bone loss in space have require stationary bicycles inside shuttles but even then degradation still poses a challenge for longer missions. A hormone known as parathormone secreted by the chief cell of the parathyroid gland is also under close investigation, though preliminary studies have shown that high doses make rats grow bone cancers and so the FDA currently limits the use of parathormone only for postmenopausal woman who’ve already fracture a bone.
How about the act of defecation and urination in space? It’s certainly no joking matter. Potty training is a real thing for astronauts, for one thing there’s no sitting in the toilet it is more like hovering at close proximity with precise calculations to land in the hole. A fellow named Scott Weinstein carries the task of potty training astronauts. Weinstein says that the simple act of urination can become a medical emergency in Zero-G, as there’s no early warning system unlike Earth. Liquid waste accumulates in the side walls of the bladder, in Earth as the bladder fills stretch receptors signal it is time to go, but in zero-G by that time the bladder signals, it might be so full that it presses the urethra shut, fantastic! Pooping in space requires the accurate measurement of “The Curl”. Without gravity to pull things straight poop tends to curl as it’s coming out. Hamilton Sundstrand engineers have not only documented this phenomenon but they know its range of curvature and directionality (backwards). Everything must be given extreme caution and deliberation, even after an appropriate bag was created to trap the curly monster. What about the bacteria that generates gas? since a fecal bag cannot fart, it could eventually burst, right? The answer: germicides. Some of the nutritional and digestive fiascos at the onset of space exploration were the infamous “meat cubes”. The coating of such cubes had been replaced with kernel oil instead of lard; this kind of oil goes through the GI tract undigested causing steatorrhea (foul smelling, fatty, oily stools). This condition according to the San Antonio Express, created “gastrointestinal effects which were incompatible with efficient performance in an orbiting vehicle” In fact, oily stools more often than not tend to ooze out and best believe that “when you have [only] one pair of underpants for a two-week spaceflight, anal leakage is not you pal.”
What about sex in space? Unfortunately there’s not much information out there, at least reliable information. What I was able to find comes from Roach’s book, and is a reference of a European magazine called Colors dating back to 1999. The magazine reports of a presumed porn film called The Uranus Experiment starring Czech actress Silvia Saint, the film was shot in a jet during a parabolic flight, not in space but nonetheless in weightlessness. The other report is a hoax called “NASA Publication 14-307-1792” which is supposedly a “post-flight summary” of shuttle STS-75 in a mission to study “approaches to continued marital relations in the zero G orbital environment”. Amusingly, the report ends with recommendations of certain positions, sex training, and an upcoming video to train astronauts.
What is most important here is development in space, can our terrestrial bodies adapt to life in the void? Are conception, gestation, and development conceivable in space? The famous YouTuber Vsauce has an amazing video called “What if You Were Born in Space?” dissecting this question. Since I am running out of time I won’t spoil it for you, but I really recommend you look it up on YouTube, the ideas he present are actually very interesting.
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