Advantages and Disadvantages of Living Without Gravity

Imagine what life would be like without gravity. Would it be fun or maybe the most horrible experience ever? Astronauts are forced to deal with these types of issues everyday. In the story 'Life Without Gravity,' astronauts are challenged to find solutions for problems faced in space. Despite all the problems, there are also positive outcomes of experiencing zero gravity. Weightlessness has advantages such as being fun and useful. There are also disadvantages such as changes in the body and nausea.

Weightlessness has its own characteristics and effects. Weightlessness is being without gravity. When experiencing weightlessness, there is no acceleration. Being weightlessness is like riding a rollercoaster when you are falling downward. Weightlessness usually occurs when there is no force of support on your body. When your body is effectively in "free fall," you are not being supported. Weightlessness usually happens in space. An effect of weightlessness is it makes everything around, below, above, and on the sides of you float. With its characteristics and effects, weightlessness has some advantages.

Weightlessness has advantages such as being fun and useful. Weightlessness can actually be very fun. You are able to fly like a bird. You can bounce wall to wall, and you can even do acrobatics. Moving would be very easy. All you would have to do is just use your head to steer where you want to go. Pretty cool, aye. Another advantage of weightlessness is its useful. You have the useful area to yourself. You can also space yourself for your own personal space. With weightlessness, you can move around freely with absolutely no worries. Even though weightlessness has advantages, it has disadvantages as well.

There are also disadvantages with weightlessness or zero gravity such as your body changes and nausea. If your body does not adapt, then it changes. Your muscles start to get weaker because they are not put to use. When your muscles are not working out, they start to get weaker and thinner. To keep these astronaut's muscles big and strong, they have to exercise everyday. Working out in space can be very difficult, but they'll do anything to keep them well so they are not weak when they return to Earth. When your body doesn't adapt to the changes in space, your bones get thinner and thinner by the day because, just like your muscles, they are just relaxing. Relaxing is wonderful, but when your bones are relaxing, that's not good at all! When your bones just stay there, they start to get too comfortable and get thinner and thinner. Then when you arrive back in Earth, you will be sore! That is why exercising, especially in space, is very, very important. Everyday the astronauts get on a treadmill or a bike and get their bones and muscles working. Another disadvantage to weightlessness is that your back begins to hurt. In space, you are required to just float around all day, causing your back to hurt because your back is just floating, with the rest of your body. While weightlessness, occurs you get nausea. You throw up and you lose your appetite because all those back flips and turns you've done, now make you dizzy and you don't even want to eat. Even when you start gaining your appetite again, food in space just taste blander. Yuck! While experiencing nausea, your blood routes to your head, causing your head to swell up. It causes your central nervous system and the receptors of many other analyzer systems to react unusually. Your head swells up because you are use to having your blood route from your head to your feet on Earth. Blood routing from your head to your feet is natural because we stand, but when you are in space, you often are upside down, which causes your blood to route to your head. Then when the blood reaches your head, your head starts to turn all red, just like a cherry, then you start experiencing major headaches. Therefore, weightlessness does have disadvantages such as the body changing and people becoming nausea.

This concludes that weightlessness has advantages and disadvantages. Although the astronauts experienced many physical changes, they learned to deal with them. Soon, they adapted to the environment and enjoyed being weightlessness. Like retired astronaut, Robert Crippen said, "The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out this beautiful Earth, that we are all lucky to inhabit."