10 disgusting things that happen to you in space
Space is beautiful, we were told. But living in space is hard. Unlike, for example, metropolises, space is not intended for the life and work of people. Barring radiation poisoning and direct exposure to near absolute zero temperatures, and the absence of air, the very absence of gravity poses a serious threat to the liquid sacks we call bodies.
From sudden urination to an incessant runny nose, space brings many unforgettable problems to our body. Let's run through the weirdest and most painful side effects that anyone who wants to be an astronaut needs to know about.
Sudden urination
On Earth your bladder notifies you that it's time. As it fills, pressure increases at the bottom of the bladder, and when it is two-thirds full, you already begin to feel a certain need. In space you won't feel it because of zero gravity. And only when the bladder reaches its maximum fullness, you will begin to feel something. But by now, you're...already done...
Let’s look at the example of astronaut John Glenn. In 1962, he expelled 0.8 liters of urine on his - and the nation's - first orbital flight, without prior warning. Luckily, he had a cuff on, allowing him to urinate without his hands. (This is, by the way, a great idea for long car trips and cinemas).
NASA deemed the innovation necessary after Glenn's predecessor Alan Shepard had to sit on the launch pad for five hours before a fifteen-minute flight into space. Shepard had no choice but to pee in his suit; in the process, he short-circuited the heart rate monitor. Currently, astronauts on the International Space Station are equipped with a high-tech solution: adult diapers that can absorb urine and turn it into drinking water at a later date. That’s how it is.
Bloating and Gas
When the stomach breaks down food, it produces gas. This is how a burp is born. On Earth, this air rises quite naturally. In space, gases remain trapped in the stomach. Any attempt to burp may result in vomiting. ISS astronaut James Newman found that a small jump can help you burp.
His "push and burp" strategy involves pushing away from the wall to move the gas in one direction (out through the esophagus) and the fluids in the stomach in the other one. The problem with gas trapping is one of the reasons why astronauts do not take carbonated drinks, mineral water or beer into space with them.
Sweat beads
The body's natural ability to absorb calcium into the bones does not work in microgravity. In space, we lose bone density ten times faster than with osteoporosis. Muscles also atrophy, because you use them very rarely - any action can be carried out with the slightest push.
For these reasons, astronauts are forced to train for several hours a day. At the same time, sweat is scattered everywhere. If you train hard enough, you will be covered in clots of sweat. It floats with you all day, to the annoyance of fellow astronauts, and never comes off. It needs to be removed and then collected. Why? It is a valuable source of water that can be processed into water.
Drenched eyes
Like sweat, tears roll into balls in space. They do not flow down your cheeks in beautiful drops. No, they cover your eyes so that you can't see anything. ISS astronaut Andrew Feistel encountered this problem in 2011 during a seven-hour spacewalk.
The anti-fog solution got into his eyes and they began to water, they could not be wiped from the inside of the suit. His walking partner Mike Fincke could only say "I'm sorry, man." So Feistel had to scratch his eyes with a device that is used to protect his nose during pressure adjustments. It was hardly pleasant, but it helped.
Mucosal problems
On Earth, your mucous membranes are drained by gravity. When you produce phlegm, it drains through your nasopharynx. It happens all day long, you just don't know it. In the absence of gravity, snot builds up and you get the symptoms of a mild cold - headache, stuffy nose, lack of taste and smell in food.
The only way to fix it is to sneeze. Sneeze many times. But this can damage the mucous membrane and is generally not the most pleasant effect. Therefore, most astronauts prefer a tasty working mechanism: hot sauce and other spicy foods. And although this will not break through the sinuses, the astronauts will feel the taste of food again.
Disorientation
The sense of "up" and "down" relies on your sense of gravity, which in turn relies on two small organs in each inner ear. The utricle and saccule use sensory hairs in the membrane layer. When we roll over, the membrane shifts, and so do the hairs with it, which indicates a change in balance.
Under weightless conditions, there is no reason to shift the membrane, so the system works badly. There is a feeling of disorientation, which you do not immediately get used to. And until you get used to it, there will be “space sickness”. Space sickness includes such symptoms as nausea, headaches, vomiting, discomfort. Technically, this is known as space adaptation syndrome, but it is informally measured on the so-called "Garn Scale".
It was created in honor of former American astronaut Edwin Garn. He served on a shuttle mission in 1985, but had a hard time adapting to space. Upon returning to Earth, other astronauts jokingly developed the Garn scale to determine how badly an astronaut was suffering from space sickness. Garn experienced the disease in "one garn" - the maximum degree of space disease. Garn has suffered from all of the above problems, but swears he never threw up.
Dancing lights
Back in the days of Apollo 11, in 1969, astronauts reported seeing bright flashes in the dark - even with their eyes closed. Astronaut Don Pettit, who has also been to the ISS, said he sees "bright dancing lights" often while falling asleep.
These lights are still a mystery, but what we do know is that when we see an object on Earth, the light from the object hits the photoreceptors at the back of our eyes. Photoreceptors signal to our brain what is happening, and it can put everything in its place.
But in space, high-energy cosmic rays are born outside the solar system, and they are everywhere; NASA scientists suspect that the dancing lights phenomenon is caused by these cosmic rays passing right through the pupil and hitting the photoreceptors, but the process is not fully understood. For many years, NASA did not believe in this phenomenon at all, they said that the astronauts were all lying.
Blood rushes to the head
Microgravity disrupts the flow of blood in the body. Not attracted to the ground, the blood floats freely in the upper part of the body; most of all - to the head. During the first few days in space, the blood vessels in the head adapt and begin to fight with so much blood rushing into the upper body. Then the swelling practically disappears and a slight swelling remains until the return to Earth.
Exhaustion
The International Space Station circles the Earth every 90 minutes, which means that a person on board experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours. These rapid transitions from light to dark disrupt the body's circadian rhythms, which are normally maintained by regular light intervals, and literally turn off the body's desire to sleep.
On average, astronauts sleep two hours less per night than on Earth. From this they become angry, irritable, exhausted, the reaction time is reduced and the concentration of attention falls. You have to take countermeasures. NASA is fighting the sleep problem with the help of alarm clocks.
Phantom limbs
Try this experiment: don't look at your hand. You do not see it, but you feel it, you know where it is relative to the body. Even this knowledge depends on gravity. Your proprioceptive system is a series of sensors in your muscles, tendons, and joints.
The stress that your joints constantly experience due to the normal action of gravity informs this system and tells the brain about the location of the limbs. Without these stresses in microgravity, it's easy to lose the feel of your own arms and legs. Many Apollo astronauts have often been woken up by someone poking them in the face and then realizing it was their own hand. That’s pretty creepy.
