What would it be like to travel to Mars and be one of its first colonists? well to get a small taste
National Geographic is sponsoring this video and sending me on a
Microgravity experience - a vomit comet
Come on this plane flies in a series of parabolic arcs so that if and everything inside can essentially be in freefall
creating a microgravity environment
the plane can also simulate the gravity on other bodies like the Moon and Mars
by modifying the parabola if I were really going to Mars I would experience not 30 seconds of microgravity as I do in this
plane but eight months of it and then when I got to Mars this would be the gravity on the surface
This is what it would be like to be on the surface of Mars there the gravity is only about
37%
of what it is on earth which means you'd be able to jump
Much higher if you're an
Average jumper on earth you get double the airtime on Mars and have no problem at all dunking on a regulation basketball hoop
The
Moon, the gravity is only
1/6 of what it is here on earth so you could really do a lot of
crazy
aerobics without being exhausted one major issue
With low gravity is that it's not very easy to exercise. I mean you're used to the fact that your arm weighs about
5% of your body weight so just
Lifting your arm and regular G is a little bit of a workout you don't get any of that
when you are
Traveling to Mars and you only get a fraction of it when you're actually on Mars on a journey to Mars as on the space
station your muscles would weaken and shrink they would atrophy
Studies have shown that muscle mass can decrease by up to 20%
On space flights lasting just 5 to 11 days so you'd have to exercise
lifting weights would be useless
So you'd have to rely on
Elastic resistance for example on the space station astronauts are
elastically tethered to a treadmill and they typically exercise two and a half hours everyday
Even so the lack of weight pushing on bones results in a decrease in bone density
Astronauts can lose one to two percent of bone
Mass per month mostly in their lower extremities that's over 10 times faster bone loss than people on earth experience through
Osteoporosis as they get older and in weightless conditions other forces become significant like the surface tension of water
everyday activities become a lot more challenging, even things like washing your face Oh
probably gonna hat
That is crazy look at the surface tension the water holds it together like that
Dealing with liquids and microgravity is really difficult which makes showering brushing your teeth and going to the bathroom much harder
it's one of the most challenging things
I got just gonna up my nose
Got it in the absence of Earth's gravity you would
Also notice some strange effects like what happens when I spin this I showed how on earth this disc flips
Heaviside up when you spin it so I wanted to see what happens in microgravity right here
Do you see it flipping back and forth
did you see that
let me slow it down so you can see it better the disc actually flips back and forth
The hole goes from one side to the other and back
Watch which side of the disc the hole is on first its facing towards me and then it flips away from me and
Now it's towards me again and now it's away from me
This effect has
actually been seen on the space station with a t-bar handle it's an example of the intermediate axis theorem that is
Rotation about an intermediate axis not the least or a greatest moment of inertia is
Unstable and any tiny disturbance will cause it to rotate about another axis as well
in addition to dealing with microgravity on a trip to Mars you would
also
Be exposed to significant amounts of radiation when it's bedtime on orbit normally you fall asleep pretty quickly because because you're tired
but once in a while you have your eyes closed and you're not asleep yet and
you occasionally will see a flash of light it's some sort of
Human body reaction to the radiation from the universe
And we think it is heavy particles or
individual
Bursts of energy coming from radiation that are either going through the eyeball itself
Or going through the optic nerve a picture back to the first astronauts who must have closed their eyes and seen that radiation and going
I'm not going to tell anybody about this because
No, one's told me about I'm not talking I can just imagine the first two guys that said hey
I am sometimes I see flashes of light do you see flashes of light and then
Oh, we all see flashes alike. Oh okay, well that's that's alright then
to me all of these difficulties represent not deal breakers but challenges to be overcome for
Humans to guarantee our long-term survival we must become a multiplanetary species on mars
Simply stepping into a spacesuit which currently weigh as much as
310 pounds would make you feel about as heavy as you are on earth
So, maybe you wouldn't feel like a basketball star after all but this would
also, allow you to maintain your muscle and bone mass
it's not that hard to shield yourself for radiation you can put it into the
Insulation of the ship you can use water of course it's a terrific radiation
Absorber so you can shield the ship but you can't ignore it and of course
One of the major challenges of different gravity is the nausea that it brings our bodies are not necessarily
evolved to be these different gravity situations
so, we've just gone through 50 parabolas I don't know if I could last many more before I start to
Lose, my breakfast you know what I'm saying
but you know our bodies evolved for millions of years in
9.8. M/s^2 gravity
if we ever moved to Mars then actually established qualities and live there our evolution may take us in
very different directions
Thanks to the National Geographic Channel for sending me on this zero-g. Adventure it's truly awesome
Life on Mars may be closer than you think check out national Geographics new season of Mars on Monday November 12th at 9/8 central