Drinking in ZERO-G! (and other challenges of a trip to Mars)

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.

On 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 in 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 every day.

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.

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. It's 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 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. Pictures back to the first astronauts who must have closed their eyes and seen that radiation and thought, "I'm not going to tell anybody about this because no one's told me about it. I'm not talking."

I can just imagine the first two guys that said, "Hey, I sometimes 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 weighs 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 from 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 in 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/s² gravity. If we ever moved to Mars, then actually established colonies and lived 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 Geographic's new season of Mars on Monday, November 12th, at 9/8 central.