Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Gravity Suits For Off World Children

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When one gazes upon the heavens that surround our fragile globe, one can not help but wonder what human civilization will look like as future generations dance upon foreign worlds.

With the final frontier ahead of us, our crowded world loses its Earthly appeal and seems to only regain it when viewed from the surface of its little sister Luna.

Unfortunately for our species, our bodies were simply not designed for living abroad, as the sub-Earth gravity has a way at reducing our hearts, bones and muscles into "malleable clay."

Not even our own immune system is not safe from the ravages of micro gravity.

To counter this, some have proposed constructing orbital space stations, while others may be looking at medical science to cure their gravitational woes.

While either of these paths would enable us to dwell among the heavens in some form or fashion, one may be too expensive to replicate across our star system while the other may be riddled with side affects.

Neither of these would allow us to thickly populate our solar system in an efficient manner, forcing our young race to remain near our birth planet.

In order for our species to live, breed and raise children off world, we are going to have to figure out an inexpensive and healthy way to raise our future young on other terrestrial bodies.

So instead of trying to alter our environment (or worse, our bodies) for "Earth norm" gravity, why not simply require future children to wear gravity suits?

Placing weights on the human body is not a new technique, as people have used weights to strengthen their legs as well as for their bodies.

A gravity suit would simply be a weighted suit that would simulate Earthen gravity by having the appropriate kilograms (or pounds) placed within the suit. These weighted suits would strengthen a person's muscles and bones, which would help fight against them suffering atrophy (for adults) and help kids muscles develop normally.

Gravity suits would also present kids born off world with the opportunity to visit Earth without worrying if their bodies could handle the pull from the home worlds gravity.

While other scientific and medical instruments could be added to the suit (for whatever practical reasons), simple weights could enable our species to not only explore other worlds, but live upon them as well.




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1 comment:

  1. Nice idea...

    Except it won't work for newborns, infants and developing children under a year old. Saddling a baby with weighted sleepers isn't going to help them grow accustom to the "new gravity". It's going to hinder their development.

    Gravity stresses all parts of the human body at the same time, not just where your clothes cover.

    The only way such a suit would work would be for it to be a pressure suit with constant gravitational pressure throughout.

    Being the parent of a 5-month old baby, I can tell you that feeding a child in such a suit would be impossible...and changing them would require more effort than you can imagine.

    Sorry, but if we are to colonize the heavens without a care about gravity, I think we're going to need a better solution.

    ReplyDelete

You can either visit the stars or watch them from afar.

But if you choose the former, you'll definitely get a better view.

~Darnell Clayton, 2007

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