Space travel can wreak havoc on the body. The price for leaving the surface of the planet and getting to live your life literally off the world is that your physiology has to battle the effects of microgravity and they aren’t exactly pleasant. Most, thankfully, are temporary — and easily reversible within a matter of weeks after returning to Earth.
The problem, however, is that as space travel opens up to more and more of the populace, and we as a species venture off to places beyond our own orbit, humans will be spending more and more of their time in space. The toll of space on the body will no longer be as repairable as before. We’ll have to find new ways to to limit the deteriorating effects of space on our frail biology.
What exactly are those effects? A new video from Life Noggin details the major ways space travel can cause the human body to fall apart slowly and make life and work aboard a spacecraft more difficult as time passes.
The two biggest culprits are the long term physiological effects of micro-gravity and cosmic ray exposure. Both of these can be mitigated, given the will and the money. Long duration human space travel has to be very fast, and very safe. Both of these are completely doable within the current context of physics and technology, as long as the propulsion system is up to the task. The faster one accelerates, the less weightless one becomes. If you can accelerate at a steady 1g, then then weightlessness is no longer an issue. Accelerating at 1g also has the added benefit of getting you to where you are going very quickly, which greatly limits the amount of damaging cosmic radiation you are exposed to. To read more, click here.