Mixed Up In Space

[Lollypop 0]

Mixed Up In Space

 

What is it like to live and sleep in space? It is positively unearthly! Many basic Earth ideas are useless. For example, in space there is no up, there is no down.

 

Is it important to have an up and down? That fundamental directionality guides our conscious and unconscious movements. Imagine that you awaken from a deep sleep, startled by the bright flash of a cosmic ray inside your eye. Still sleepy, you wonder...Which way is up? Where are my arms and legs? You open your eyes and see the flight engineer with her head upside down and her feet near the ...ceiling? Or is it a wall? Close your eyes and you still can not tell which is up or down and, worse yet, you can not tell where your limbs are.

 

These strange sensations surprise first-time space travelers. On Earth, we always know which way is up. The human inner ear has sensors that feel the pull of gravity. These sensors signal the brain with information about directionality and orientation. In space, the inner ear does not have the same gravitational information. For a human in space, it can feel topsy-turvy and confusing.

 

Astronauts notice these weird changes. Space Shuttle crew member Robert Parker remembers,"One of the questions they asked us during our first flight was,'Close your eyes...now, how do you determine up?' " With his eyes closed, he could not tell which way was up. Up and down had vanished!

 

Another astronaut recounted a strange awakening. He opened his eyes, he saw the room floating around him. Or was it? On Earth, he always slept on his right side. Because of this habit, his brain thought that up was on his left at wake-up time. This time, however, the 'ceiling' was above his head. As his eyes surveyed the bizarre scene of a room rotating around a floating body, his brain had to wake up and work hard to adjust his sense of "up."

 

For many crew members, they spend the first few days in space keeping themselves oriented up with respect to the writing on the walls. This helps the adjustment to life in space. "After day two, I was more adventurous and would turn upside down for fun," reported mission specialist John-David Bartoe,"I had no problem!"

 

Other sensory systems in the human body miss the feeling of gravity as well. The proprioceptive system - the sense that tells you where your arms and legs are without having to look - is fooled without the feeling of gravity. As astronauts doze, they lose track of where their arms and legs are. This can be a scary feeling. To find their limbs, they have to consciously command them to move. When asleep, arms and legs just float!

 

One astronaut was confused when he awakened in the dark and saw a glowing watch face floating nearby. Where did this come from? As he stared at the watch, he realized that it was on his own arm!

 

These kinds of mismatches between what the eyes see and what the body feels can cause 'space sickness.' Scientists think that 'space sickness' is much like being 'car sick' on Earth. For a person trying to read in the car, the inner ear sends the motion signals to the brain but the eyes, staring at unmoving words, register stationary signals.

 

The symptoms are similar to those of motion sickness. Some astronauts experience mild headaches, vertigo, or nausea. In a bad case, vomiting can make a space traveler dehydrated, malnourished, and exhausted. Fortunately, the brain adapts. Space sickness usually goes away after thee days.

 

Preventing and treating space sickness is important to NASA. For that reason, NASA helped start the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. This institute studies how humans adapt to space and tries to develop remedies and preventive care for problems such as space sickness. They also study dizziness, balance impairment, physical changes to bones and muscles in weightlessness, the inner ear sensory system and the psychology of long-term space flight. This research will directly benefit millions of patients that will never leave our planet.

 

These problems never seem to bother the space travelers in the science fiction movies. There are no barf bags on the USS Enterprise. Captain Kirk never gets out of bed upside-down. In the command center, there are chairs and everyone's head is up. On Star Trek's Enterprise, artificial gravity provides the sensory cues for the crew. On the Space Shuttle and the Space Station, these crafts remain in orbit by falling around the earth; this 'free fall' creates the weightlessness that confuses human systems.

 

These problems do trouble real space travelers as well as earth-bound humans. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute will continue to research these and other human responses to weightlessness in space and on our planet.

 

 

Can you imagine if the Enterprise came across a ship that was upside down...

[ensign_beedrill 0]

I always thought it was funny in TOS when the Enterprise, after a nasty attack, would float "tilted" in space. I guess it's supposed to look crippled. But it just looks kind of funny. In space... it really doesn't matter if you're tilted. It all depends on your point of reference. If your point of reference is that "tilted" is normal, then you're going to think you're normal, and not tilted. You're going to think that the person watching you is tilted. And that person watching, thinks that he's normal, so he thinks that the Enterprise is tilted. Funny thing. Makes me snicker.

 

I get motion sick. I hate it. Guess I won't be going up in space any time soon. I'd get sick while going up, and I'd be sick the whole time I'm there. Doesn't sound like much fun. ¬.¬

[nik 0]

That's one thing that's always bugged me about Star Trek - or nearly any sci-fi show/movie I've seen. All the ships are aligned the same. I can understand the

diplomacy and aesthetics of aligning ships a certain way after meeting, but even when they come out of warp from

different parts of the galaxy, they are always aligned the same.

[ensign_beedrill 0]

That's one thing that's always bugged me about Star Trek - or nearly any sci-fi show/movie I've seen. All the ships are aligned the same.  I can understand the

diplomacy and aesthetics of aligning ships a certain way after meeting, but even when they come out of warp from

different parts of the galaxy, they are always aligned the same.

Maybe they have a universe-wide accepted norm for alignment. Improbable, but not impossible.

[nik 0]

That's one thing that's always bugged me about Star Trek - or nearly any sci-fi show/movie I've seen. All the ships are aligned the same.  I can understand the

diplomacy and aesthetics of aligning ships a certain way after meeting, but even when they come out of warp from

different parts of the galaxy, they are always aligned the same.

Maybe they have a universe-wide accepted norm for alignment. Improbable, but not impossible.

Maybe they do - based on the galactic coordinate system they use. That would explain a lot.