Few of us ever get to float in space, much less feel what it's like to be stuck in mid-air.
Humans have all kinds of fears, from reasonable to totally irrational. But one fear most of us may have never even considered is being stuck hovering in mid-air, in the middle of a room, unable to make our body move in one direction or another no matter how hard or how fast we move our arms and legs.
Why would we, after all? Gravity works perfectly well here on Earth and we know how to make our bodies move in accordance with the forces of physics. The vast majority of us would never find ourselves in the scenario described above, thankfully. Many people have had that dream where you're running as hard as you can and not getting anywhere, but doing it while suspended in space is a whole other level of nightmare fuel.
In a video that has repeatedly gone viral, an astronaut demonstrated what it's like to be trapped in mid-air in a video from the International Space Station (ISS) and it unlocked a new phobia for people.
from Damnthatsinteresting
Can you really get stuck in mid-air on the ISS?
As retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield explained in a 2011 Q & A after a 5-month stint on the ISS, it is possible to get stuck floating in the space station if you can't reach a wall to push yourself off from.
"Yes, it is—you can get stuck floating in the center of Node 1, where open space is biggest due to hatches on all sides," he wrote on Reddit. "But ISS has fans and forced air to mix and refresh the internal atmosphere, so there's always a small crosswind. Wait long enough, you'll get pulled to an air inlet."
So, you wouldn't be stuck like this forever but it might feel like it for a bit. One way to solve the problem if no one is around to help you would be to take off your clothes, wad them into a compact ball, and throw them, utilizing Newton's third law of motion to create a force that would propel you backward. Even the flailing around we see would move you incrementally in one direction if you repeat it long enough. You could also try blowing really hard, which would make for a very slow solution but would help you move a tiny bit. The only way to truly get stuck this way is for you to be nude with no air currents at all.
Of course, getting yourself into this mid-air hovering position in the first place is nearly impossible, since any momentum that pushed you into the middle of the room would move you out of it as well. You'd have to have your fellow astronauts purposefully put you in the center of Node 1 and hold you absolutely still before letting go in order to hover like that, which we see is exactly what happened in a longer version of this video. It's a fun experiment to watch, though, unless you're truly terrified of being stuck this way.
Zero gravity does weird things to the human body
Living on the ISS is strange, as our bodies aren't accustomed to a zero gravity environment. But the station has had people living there continuously since 2000 and we've learned a lot about what humans need to thrive without gravity. It's very important for astronauts on the ISS to exercise at least two hours daily, for instance, both for muscle and bone health.
The ISS has special equipment to help astronauts maintain muscle strength in zero gravity.Photo credit: NASA
As NASA shares:
"NASA has learned that without Earth’s gravity affecting the human body, weight-bearing bones lose on average 1% to 1.5% of mineral density per month during spaceflight. After returning to Earth, bone loss might not be completely corrected by rehabilitation; however, their risk for fracture is not higher. Without the proper diet and exercise routine, astronauts also lose muscle mass in microgravity faster than they would on Earth."
NASA adds that eyesight can be impacted by the zero gravity environment as well.
"The fluids in the body shift upward to the head in microgravity, which may put pressure on the eyes and cause vision problems. If preventive or countermeasures are not implemented, crews may experience an increased risk of developing kidney stones due to dehydration and increased excretion of calcium from their bones."
The fact that humans can now live in space is a remarkable testament to our ability to innovate, and the more we learn about what lies beyond the bounds of our planet, the more possibilities we'll find for the future of humanity (just as long as we always help one another out when we find ourselves stuck running in place).
