Fascinations: Space Sickness

      Motion sickness is rarely featured in popular media, the movie Woman on Top, starring Penelope Cruz, being a notable exception.  (The movie features a woman who must drive or be in the “driving” position to avoid getting nauseated, which causes problems with her macho husband). 
     In most stories set in outer space, motion sickness or other health deficits associated with microgravity seldom—if ever—play into the plot.  This is a missed opportunity to challenge characters already under pressure.  Imagine how much harder Ripley’s survival would’ve been in the Alien movies if she’d been struggling with motion sickness when the monster attacked.

      Because the human body evolved for Earth’s gravity and rotational speed, astronauts often struggle with “space sickness.”  According to the Davidson Institute, this type of motion sickness can include “nausea, dizziness, vomiting, headaches, fatigue, general malaise, visual hallucinations, and disorientation in space.”

      Space sickness can have serious implications if, for example, vomit landed on delicate equipment.  According to the National Space Center, “astronauts use patches affixed to their body to give them doses of medication before spacewalks – as an added safety mechanism.  It is one thing to throw up in your spacecraft, but throwing up inside your spacesuit helmet could be fatal.  With nowhere for it to go, the potential for blocking up the oxygen supply or stopping an astronaut from being able to see means that extra safety steps need to be taken.” 

      The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency says, “If you stay for a few days in space, your brain adjusts its interpretation of the vestibular information, so the space sickness [usually] goes away.  There are individual differences in the severity of space sickness, and some people don't experience it at all.  When you return to earth, you experience the effects of earth's gravity again, and thus ‘gravity sickness’ sometimes occurs, with similar symptoms as space sickness.”

      “Long-term exposure to zero gravity causes multiple health problems including redistribution of fluids and loss of bone and muscle mass.  Over time, these effects can compromise astronaut performance, which can increase the risk of them being harmed, as well as reduce their ability to absorb oxygen, which slows down their cardiovascular activity.”  (Davidson Institute)
      According to NASA, “For every month in space, astronauts’ weight-bearing bones become roughly 1% less dense if they don’t take precautions to counter this loss.  Muscles, usually activated by simply moving around on Earth, also weaken because they no longer need to work as hard.  This loss of bone and muscle is called atrophy [and] has serious implications for astronaut health.”

      An article published by Texas A&M says, “Currently there are several countermeasures in place on the International Space Station that seek to lessen the detrimental effects of weightlessness, including extensive exercise protocols.  Unfortunately, about two-thirds of returning shuttle astronauts still experience some degree of orthostatic intolerance upon return to Earth. …Artificial gravity (AG) generated by the use of a centrifuge combined with exercise is a promising countermeasure to diminish these effects. … The centrifuge creates a gravitational force in the subjects similar to what is experienced on Earth.”

The benefits of artificial gravity are further explored in a study from Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience:

      “Were astronauts to embark upon a journey to Mars today, the 6-month exposure to weightlessness en route would leave them considerably debilitated, even with the implementation of the suite of piece-meal countermeasures currently employed.  Continuous or intermittent exposure to simulated gravitational states on board the spacecraft while traveling to and from Mars, also known as artificial gravity, has the potential for enhancing adaptation to Mars gravity and re-adaptation to Earth gravity.”
      However: “No human-rated centrifuges [built] specifically to counteract cardiovascular and musculoskeletal deconditioning have flown in space to date.”  And there are many unknowns, for example: “the impacts of centrifugation inside a space vehicle on the vibration level, motion sickness, or crew time.”

      Although today’s astronauts are trained in simulated microgravity, that doesn’t mean they won’t get sick in space.   According to The Mars Generation, “There’s no formal test as of now that can define whether or not someone is going to get SAS when they go into space.  And it’s not even correlated as to whether or not you get motion sickness here on Earth.” 
      I dreamed of going into space as a child, but assumed my terrible motion sickness (and poor eyesight) limited my aspirations.  It’s possible I wouldn’t get sick in space . . . but the detrimental risks of space travel, including space sickness, remain very real—and woefully underutilized in modern science fiction stories.

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