• Question: Is going into space dangerous for your health?

    Asked by Kit Kat to yoyehudi, Oli, Nina, Kerrianne, Ed on 7 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Kerrianne Harrington

      Kerrianne Harrington answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Yup! Ignoring the dangerous of launching yourself into space, providing everything goes well it will still have an effect on your body. With no protection that we get just by being on earth, it does all sorts to your body. Two come straight to mind for me. With no gravity, your heart doesn’t have to work against gravity to pump your blood around your body. It can get lazy and become weak, which is a problem when back on earth. With no atmosphere around us, cosmic rays, which are always bombarding us, become more of a problem. Astronauts are exposed to high levels of radiation from space because they are no longer shielded by the magnetic field and atmosphere of the earth.

      There’s tons of effects, which is fascinating because we take many of them for granted. Wikipedia has a great list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      I can’t really add much to Kerrianne’s brilliant answer, except to nudge you towards this great article that discusses the potentially fatal effects of terrifying-sounding proton storms and solar flares. You don’t want to get radiation sickness anywhere, and definitely not on the Moon… https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/stereo_astronauts.html

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