Abstract
Even before sending humans into space much thought went into how the human body is affected by weightlessness. Research on how weightlessness affected living bodies was first conducted with animals. Additional lessons have been learned during the first 50+ years of human spaceflight. However, a considerable amount of uncertainty still exists about the effects of spaceflight (and weightlessness) on the human body. These effects range from a transient complex of gastrointestinal and central nervous system symptoms through anemia to loss of weight, bone and muscle. More recently, the effects of weightlessness on the eyes and vision have become an area of intense study. Even more uncertainty exists regarding the origin of some of these effects.
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Notes
- 1.
Permanent only in the sense that untold numbers of generations are required to change them. Temporary in that they are limited to the individual and not encoded and passed on to the next generation.
- 2.
Unless noted, when used here adaptation is somatic.
- 3.
In space, the body adapts to meet its needs in weightlessness without concern for returning to 1-g where it will readapt.
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Thornton, W., Bonato, F. (2017). Basic Mechanisms. In: The Human Body and Weightlessness. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32829-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32829-4_2
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