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Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements
- leereeves 2y agoWould running prevent deconditioning in muscles that aren't stressed by running?
- cdot2 2y agoRunning in a circle like this would temporarily give the impression of higher gravity which would affect all muscles.
- leereeves 2y agoThat makes sense, thanks. So the claim here is that exposure to a force similar to Earth gravity for "a few laps a day" would prevent/reduce whole-body deconditioning? I guess that makes sense too, since a few reps of weightlifting every couple days is enough to trigger muscle growth and bone densification.
- irjustin 2y agoIn a circle, you're in an accelerating reference frame and in theory your body can't tell the difference. The amount of exercise you would have to do to even begin to remotely keep up with earth's gravity is insane. Separately, how does aging fair with zero g? can really old people live longer up there or is it actually worse?
- WalterBright 2y agoOur bodies are exquisitely optimized for the surface of the Earth. Any deviation from that (gravity, sunlight, gas pressure, gas composition, radiation, etc.) is likely to be deleterious. This does not bode well for expanding out into the solar system. It might only work if we do some genetic engineering to make off-world habitats more habitable.
- Animats 2y ago> It might only work if we do some genetic engineering to make off-world habitats more habitable. Regular engineering, of robots, will probably work first.
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoFor the life of me I can't visualize how this would with in practice at all.
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- FriedPickles 2y agoIt would look a lot like the circular running track in SkyLab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiMq-fdRhLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiMq-fdRhLo
- leereeves 2y agoBut probably on a slight angle so the sum of the centripetal force and the moon's gravity is along the body axis. Or perhaps a bowl shape that you climb up the sides of as you speed up.
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- morepork 2y agoThere are pictures in the article of their test setup with someone running on the wall which might help
- barbarr 2y agoProbably something like this guy running out of a ditch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXTElHLT_I https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cfXTElHLT_I
- B1FF_PSUVM 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5yislIOui8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5yislIOui8 A carnival show where a motorcycle rides inside a conical well. In lunar gravity you can probably do (some of) it without the motorcycle.
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- Nevermark 2y agoI didn't see any mention of having a spinning surface. A tapered cylinder "gravity gym" with adjustable angled walls, and variable speed spinning, could smoothly create much greater "gravity". Spin gravity would also enable body weight exercises, core exercises, stationary or small area cardio like exercise bikes, VR games, yoga, etc. Even sleeping. EDIT: I missed this: > but Moon-based centrifuges allowing locomotion inside would pose technical challenges Still think it will be inevitable. Far more useful physically and psychologically. "Spinning surface" is a simple challenge, compared to "low-g health deterioration" and "bored to death of running in circles". Equipment like this might resolve issues with off-world childbearing. Time to "spin up" some space rabbits and see what we get! (Hopefully not tribbles.) Spin areas will surely become ubiquitous in all low gravity colonies. Startup anyone?
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoYou probably know this already, but for a while people were toying with the idea of a "childbirth centrifuge". https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en There's probably a reason it never caught on.
- Nevermark 2y agoReason one - We already have gravity here. Reason two - Childbirth + vertigo? WTF! Clearly they should have gone with a rudimentary linear accelerator such as a bungy drop or bouncing elevator type system!
- antonvs 2y ago> Clearly they should have gone with a rudimentary linear accelerator Like a railgun.
- estebank 2y agoWhile on the subject of inventions to aid with childbirth, I'll leave this here: https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/why-were-chainsaws-invented.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-m...
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoWhenever I see horizontal running I thought of Sir Humphrey and the Christmas special.
- pmcarlton 2y agoIt takes a few clicks to get to the supplemental data movie: https://rs.figshare.com/articles/media/a_participant_running_on_WoD_from_Horizontal_running_inside_circular_walls_of_Moon_settlements_a_comprehensive_countermeasure_for_low-gravity_deconditioning_/25530021 https://rs.figshare.com/articles/media/a_participant_running... You'd probably want to switch directions often!
- alex_young 2y agoWhy? The bungee cord is only needed for earth gravity.
- purpleidea 2y agoBecause the moon still has gravity, and there would be some asymmetrical force on your legs either which would be reversed if you went the other direction. So switch directions all the time to be less lopsided.
- alex_young 2y agoThe moon has a sixth of earth gravity. The force you would feel would be very small and the whole point of this is to increase the resistance against the wall you’re running on. If you’ve ever been on a spinning wheel at a carnival where they move the whole thing 90 degrees it would be a bit like that. The track would actually be straight, so you wouldn’t have to compensate for turning even. I’m not saying you wouldn’t want to switch directions, but there shouldn’t be some imperative to do so often.
- pmontra 2y agoThe runner will feel a pull to the left, as if the track had a slope in that direction. I wonder if that could give motion sickness to somebody. Probably people sent to the Moon will be selected against that because of the journey to and from the Moon but I really have no idea about that. Another problem, as pointed out by someone else in the comments, is that the floor is not flat but points upward and the feet and ankles might feel that. Furthermore it's another possible source of motion sickess (flat but not flat.)
- SimianLogic 2y agoIs there a reason something like a water rower wouldn’t work on the moon? Possibly with a weighted vest or a weighted seat. Rowing is pretty full body and doesn’t seem that reliant on gravity.
- BenFranklin100 2y agoA rower wouldn’t provide the same impact forces on the feet, a key driver of the physiological processes that maintain bone density in the legs, hips, and likely even spine.
- z3t4 2y agoForces from the muscles are the main bone stimulator. Running in low gravity would probably use less muscle force then a rowing machine.
- infogulch 2y agoI wonder if they use a rower on the ISS.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- safety1st 2y agoI'm always baffled that these studies don't put more emphasis on resistance training, since the main issue is that your body no longer has to resist the forces of gravity on a day-to-day basis. In theory exercises like the major compound lifts should go a long way because they stimulate almost every muscle in the body. You get a lot of sustained muscle growth out of doing big lifts even just 2-3 times of week. Of course you're not going to be literally lifting weights in space because they're weightless! But resistance can be produced with bands, pneumatics etc. Rowing is a really good one because you get resistance training and cardio at the same time. But the Moon does have gravity, just less of it. Is no one considering just squatting and deadlifting huge-ass boulders? Fill a big basket with moon rocks and eventually it's gonna be heavy...
- skykooler 2y agoCould you do this in zero-G, too? This seems like a lot simpler than trying to have a section of a space station rotate and maintain seals around it.
- zizee 2y agoYou might like this video from Skylab: https://youtu.be/S_p7LiyOUx0?si=J_JqunYl2OkeROa7 https://youtu.be/S_p7LiyOUx0?si=J_JqunYl2OkeROa7 (23 second mark)
- peeters 2y agoI think having some level of gravity is important for the simplicity of it. With a downward force it acts somewhat like a velodrome. You start angled upwards and as you gain centripetal force you gradually go more and more horizontal. Theoretically you could achieve the same result in zero-g, but getting started is much more difficult, as are microadjustments in speed and balance.
- hammock 2y agoWill we ever put men on the moon (again)? It’s been 52 years
- petesergeant 2y agoThat’s the plan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program
- purpleidea 2y agoIt's very expensive. The plan needs serious improving.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoLooks cheaper than the Apollo program when adjusted for inflation (Apollo was $257 billion in 2023 dollars)
- eru 2y agoIf you want to make it look even cheaper, you can adjust for GDP growth instead. (It's still very expensive in absolute terms, and you can have a discussion about whether it's really the best use of tax payer funds.)
- rokkitmensch 2y agoSkateboarding on the moon is going to /killllll/.
- morebortplates 2y agoSwimming would be a pretty interesting experience as well. You probably could even walk on water. https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/124/
- abecedarius 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menace_from_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menace_from_Earth I'm not sure how realistic the muscle-powered flight is, but a different form has been done on Earth.
- romanhn 2y agoReminded me of circular wall running in 2001 Space Odyssey more than 50 years ago: https://youtu.be/1wJQ5UrAsIY https://youtu.be/1wJQ5UrAsIY
- OscarCunningham 2y agoIf he ran in the same direction as the station was rotating then he would feel extra force pushing him into the ground, whereas running the other way would cancel some of the centrifugal force. I wonder if the directions would feel like 'uphill' and 'downhill'. I assume for training purposes you would probably want uphill. I don't know if the movie gives you enough information to work out which way the spinning section is going.
- corlinp 2y agoFinally I get to be that guy in the comments with a weird about of relevant experience. I built the world's largest hamster wheel in 2012[1], a large rotating circular platform ~6m in diameter. It was a fun and unique experience to run on for a short amount of time, but most people would get dizzy after a few minutes of jogging on it. The curved platform also turned out to be a bit of a tripping hazard. It was more often used as a sort of swing (could this work on the moon?). I'm skeptical that the experience on the moon will be much better, especially since the diameter they're proposing is even smaller. 1. https://sdusd-newsfeed.blogspot.com/2012/09/pt-loma-high-senior-prank-is.html https://sdusd-newsfeed.blogspot.com/2012/09/pt-loma-high-sen...
- antonvs 2y agoWith a hamster wheel, aren't you basically running in one spot near the bottom? If so, do you know what causes the dizziness?
- corlinp 2y agoBecause you're looking forward at the platform that's moving down and toward you. Kind of like if you were to stare down at the belt of a treadmill while it's moving - it would be disorienting after a while.
- avar 2y agoDoesn't this boil down to a claim that blind people are incapable of running on a constant upwards slope due to motion sickness? Because even if your claim is correct, and the conflicting visual input is disorienting, the Moon-dweller on a similar contraception could just close their eyes.
- bloppe 2y agoStaring down is not equivalent to being blind. Motion sickness occurs when signals from your eyes (like the motion of the world around you), body (like wind on your face) and auricular semicircular canals (organs in your ear that sense acceleration) conflict with one another. In theory, your brain reacts to this with nausea because historically that situation would mainly arise due to illness or poisoning, so it might be good to vomit. That's why you can sometimes alleviate car sickness by opening a window (convincing your brain that you're definitely moving) or, if you're driving at constant speed, refraining from looking out the window (convincing your brain that you're stationary). Blind people only have 2 out of the three signals so they might be less prone to motion sickness.
- DemocracyFTW2 2y agoRunning around in circles sounds like a great way to fight boredom. Right next to their aptly named Wheel-of-Death device there's an entire room dedicated to paintwatching, which is a bit like birdwatching, or at least so says the promotional material.
- pugworthy 2y agoShades of 2001: A Space Odyssey
- latchkey 2y agoI spent so many years riding bikes in circles on a velodrome. Doesn't seem too different. When I would ride behind a motorbike, at 40+ mph, it was effort to just keep my body from being pushed down into the handlebars. At 50+, my tires would start to skip upwards/outwards.
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoVelodromes already seem cool to me, so a velodrome on the moon seems cool as hell.
- semi-extrinsic 2y agoKeep in mind if you are putting in enough speed to get rotational acceleration of 0.5 G on Earth, that would be around 1.3 - 1.4 G total acceleration (depending on the bank angle). But on the moon it would just be 0.5 - 0.6 G.
- latchkey 2y agoVery interesting point, thanks!
- slyall 2y agoThe book "Imperial Earth" by Arthur Clark featured a circular cycle track on a low-gravity spaceship. The main protagonist was trying to train for earth gravity so he cycled around it very fast until he felt 1G
- martyvis 2y agoThere was a zero G running track in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey"
- n1b0m 2y agoIs this the same concept as the running scene in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey?
- jiri 2y agoActually no. In the movie, there is already gravity present in the hub - generated by rotating this large cylindrical hub. Running in such hub would increase gravity slightly but no running is needed at all! Just being in such hub is comparable to running in cylinder mentioned in the paper. Running in small (10m) diameter cylinder increase gravity significantly without need to spin the cylinder. Anyway to minimize effects of Coriolis force in spinning cylinder, I think that the size of the cylinder would be significantly larger than the size in the movie.
- abecedarius 2y agoAre you thinking of the space station? The running scene was in the interplanetary ship, with a 12m diameter cylinder spinning just enough for moon-level gravity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One
- gadders 2y ago>>Long-lasting exposure to low gravity, such as in lunar settlements planned by the ongoing Artemis Program, elicits muscle hypotrophy, bone demineralization, cardio-respiratory and neuro-control deconditioning, against which optimal countermeasures are still to be designed. Rather than training selected muscle groups only, ‘whole-body’ activities such as locomotion seem better candidates, I don't get why whole body locomotion would be the best way to combat muscle hypotrophy and bone demineralisation when that is not the best method on earth. A better approach would be using bands or even moon rocks to lift weights etc. Just set new lunar records for the deadlift, squat etc.
- eru 2y ago> I don't get why whole body locomotion would be the best way to combat muscle hypotrophy and bone demineralisation when that is not the best method on earth. Whole body locomotion is approximately the only way we have ever tried on earth to combat muscle hypotrophy. So we don't know whether that's the best method or not: we just haven't tried anything else. To be more precise, any method we have tried on earth, be that bands or weight lifting etc _also_ included a hefty dose of whole body locomotion inside a strong gravity field. (You can get great results from hitting the gym for squats and deadlifts three times a week for an hour. But that regime also includes 24/7 exposure to 1g of gravity.)
- gadders 2y agoGot you. So we would need to do the experiment to try resistance training in low/no gravity to see whether it would work or not. It would seem like the obvious thing to try though as it is the best method in regular gravity.
- eru 2y agoOh, it's definitely something we should try. We need a lot more experiments. The only thing we know for sure is that moving around in 1g is generally enough for our bodies. Especially once you throw in a bit of deliberate exercise. We also already know from our space stations that 0g is bad for you, and even exercise can only mitigate some of the damage. But that's already the limit of our definite knowledge. But we don't know where the boundaries are, and whether the transition is smooth. Eg I would suspect 0.01g to be still pretty bad, and 0.99g to be indistinguishable from earth for our bodies. But would 0.9g be enough? Probably yes, but who knows? What about 0.5g? Is it bad? Is it 50% as bad as 0g? Would 0.2g give you 80% of the benefits of 1g? We don't know.
- netman21 2y agoNow I envision a multi-story lunar habitat with a 30 foot diameter well that you have to run on to get from one level to the next. At least to get up. Getting down may just involve jumping down.
- Nevermark 2y ago> Moon-based centrifuges allowing locomotion inside would pose technical challenges and demand substantial electrical energy. Comments: > would pose technical challenges That's a very funny disadvantage to call out! "Technical challenges" are how you know you are on the moon. A stable rotating system would seem to be one of the simplest possible lunar challenges. If it is implemented within an existing environment shell, it could be quite low tech. > demand substantial electrical energy. Maintaining rotation in low Earth gravity should be a very low energy process. The only energy loss would be friction at the point of rotation, which should be minimal, and some position controlled weights, for maintaining balancing in the context of human movement. But the proposed no-tech solution has a great return on investment, and is realistic for early days, or infrequently inhabited outposts.
- nicklecompte 2y agoOne question I have that I didn't see addressed in the article: how does the inner ear work in low gravity? I wonder if this might make astronauts unusually dizzy on the moon because of differences in the vestibular system. This article seems like a good survey of the general impact low-g has on the inner ear changes, but I've barely skimmed it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595211/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8595211/
- delecti 2y agoThere have been studies on the subject, and participants could adapt to rotations as high as 23 RPM. In this test they were more in the 5-10 RPM range (depending on which iteration and how fast the participants were running), so it'd probably be fine after some adjustment. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14703662/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14703662/
- nicklecompte 2y agoThat is interesting, but my concern is a bit different than that article - I'm worried about what happens when the astronaut stops. After they are done running, they will be at rest in a low-g environment (unlike this experiment), but their inner ear fluid will have most of the momentum it had while they were running - this is the physiological basis of merry-go-round dizziness. On earth the fluids quickly settle and the dizziness fades. I wonder if maybe it would take considerably longer on the moon. It is probably something they can adjust to, but I was wondering.
- delecti 2y agoI doubt they'd just stop. I imagine in practice this would be more of a parabolic track, and they'd slow to a jog after the peak of their workflow. That would give time for their cochlear fluid to slow down as well. And even that aside, I'm not sure the lack of gravity would change how quickly cochlear fluid settles. I think that settling is due to resistance from the fluid turbulence of the cochlear canals, not due to gravity.