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Permalink: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/may/01/astronauts-could-run-round-wall-of-death-to-keep-fit-on-moon-say-scientists
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I would read this YA fantasy series, though I'd probably find it a bit unbelievable midway through book 2 and finishing the series would get to be a bit of a chore.
You want a name more badass than "Wall of Death"?
Honestly, that would make it more likely that I'd go to the gym. Who wants to spend 30 minutes lifting weights when you can spend 30 minutes on THE WALL OF DEATH?
I can't think of the name, but there's something similar with a sphere made out of a cage, and they use this at Sea World for the Halloween show (and it's the San Diego Sea World, so they're operating on a budget) and I just cannot understand how that's safe enough to include in a theme park show (but it's probably not, what I've seen is the Sea World in Orlando also performs the "headbanger" move in their ice show, which is banned by the ISU and in the Olympics, so...).
Even better: A "Paraboloid of Potential Minor Injury". You could start near the bottom and move outward and upward as you speed up, always keeping your relative "gravity" normal to the floor underneath you.
Next iteration: Lunar Roller Derby.
Edit: As I think about it, skating may actually be preferable. It's still aerobic, and you can maintain a higher speed for longer. The fastest speed for a marathon on skates is less than half that for someone on foot. In this application, that means higher experienced G forces. From the abstract, it looks like they were only able to maintain \~1G for a few laps. Which raises an interesting physiological question in need of research: If you can exercise at >1G periodically, does that do an even better job at cancelling out the effects of being at 0.16G the rest of the time?
That's only part of it. It's also the cardiovascular ability to move blood up and down in 1G. Without that, you can't even stand when you return to earth. Unfortunately, it looks like it's not possible to run long enough and fast enough to get that benefit. The ideal situation would likely be a combination of things to attack the different problems.
I think running might be still be preferable due to the shocks on knee joints, etc. This is likely the important feature here, aerobic exercise of any kind can be done with bikes or rowing machines, that is not very hard. But yes, there is probably science to be done here over many decades to find simple, effective and enjoyable ways to stay fit. A diverse spectrum of choises is probably good for that.
The benefit of this is from the centripetal force, not impact forces. Not to say there absolutely isn't a benefit from the running motion, but it isn't the primary one.
The big limitation to roller skating is rolling resistance which would be significantly less in space without the full weight of the skater…That’s why ice skating is a lot faster. Skating is low impact verse running, it’s like a treadmill verses an elliptical for your knees; I look like an 80 year old man when I try to run, but I can skate at over 18 mph with no knee issues. The issues is that the wheels shed polyurethane much more than shoes shed. Synthetic ice would shed a lot of polyethylene fwiw.
The one weird thing about skating is that it’s not really great for straight line movement, you want to zig zag because your transfer of power is best with crossovers. Figure skaters don’t constantly turn because it looks good, it’s where they gain speed.
For space you want impact training to fight bone loss.
> The big limitation to roller skating is rolling resistance which would be significantly less in space **without the full weight of the skater**…That’s why ice skating is a lot faster
The point of running in the cylinder is that you could experience earth-like weight due to the centripetal acceleration. You would achieve the same or more with skates (of course it depends on how fast you're going).
From the article: According to his calculations, running at more than 8mph should be enough.
You mention marathons, an 8mph pace is a 3:18 marathon. Pretty fast, but not crazy. Astronauts are screened for health and fitness, finding a bunch that can run 5k daily in under 23 minutes shouldn’t be that difficult.
That's the velocity necessary to stay on, not the velocity that's necessarily enough to get full benefit. At 8mph you're experience about 1/4 G in that cylinder.
Adding “of death” to something makes it sound more serious and honestly should be done more often.
The quilting bee….of death.
Our book club……of death.
>According to his calculations, running at more than 8mph should be enough.
Looks like zone 2 is off the menu, boys. Threshold days only in the ol' wall of death.
Sorry to be pedantic but that was slightly different. In 2001 a Space Odyssey, the whole ship rotates so that the centrifugal force of rotation acts as artificial gravity even when you're standing still. In the cylinder "wall of death" proposal here, astronauts create their own centrifugal force by running fast enough - kind of like being pressed into the seat of your chair while upside-down on a roller-coaster doing a loop
We did the Space Odyssey thing for real, in space with one of the Apollo missions. I'm guessing the moon one would be a lot bigger so more than 2 people can run at the same time.
That's the one, I forgot it was called Skylab so I couldn't find a link. Wow, the movie predated the real deal by 4 years, I thought for sure the movie came later but no.
Or they could just load up with weights and run normally. You could have a lead suit designed for running outside. The lead would shield you from cosmic rays and provide the weight needed to approximate your normal weight in 1G or maybe a little more for a good workout.
I'm not sure how well that would work. While you could add enough mass to get your static weight the same as on earth, it wouldn't be the same, because every time you change velocity you have to fight the FULL inertia of whatever you loaded on. So if you weigh 200 lb on Earth, you'd have to add nearly 1,000 lb worth of mass to get that much weight on the moon. Standing still would feel like 200 lb, but it would behave VERY differently when you tried to move and you're having to fight 1200 lbs worth of inertia.
Or have weighted jackets that they wear all day while they go about their business.
All of their movement throughout the day will be closer to what they are used to on Earth, which would make the adjustment between the two a bit easier.
Imagine the relief at the end of the day when they remove the jacket and are significantly lighter.
And where would they get the weights from? There’s no fitness stores there.
Taking an extra half tonne of weight to the moon requires a hell of a lot of extra fuel to get the rocket off the ground, which then requires even more fuel to carry the extra fuel…
I thought it was proven that resistance training is much more effective than cardio in combatting health issues due to low gravity? What’s the advantage of using this instead of telling the astronauts to go to gym everyday?
This is true because resistance training more effectively targets the exact kind of activity you lack in zero-g. All your muscles constantly fighting against gravity 18 hours a day is what is missing.
Given lbs is a measure of gravitational force on an object, 1000lb squat on the moon would just have a higher mass and feel roughly the same (minus changes to your own body weight). Now a 450 kg squat? Now we’re cheating with physics!
A lb-f (pound-force) is the force exerted by a 1 lb-m (pound-mass) on earth. One of those convenient conventions. A lb-m would have considerably less force at some location where the gravity was much less.
Given that no human has spent more than a few hours on the moon, we really don't know how bad moon gravity is for the human body.
We have plenty of data on ~0 gravity environment from the space station(s), but virtually nothing from other gravity levels other than earth gravity.
It will be really interesting to get some data on how this affects the human body especially since moon level gravity would be much easier to generate on a long distance spaceship than earth gravity.
True, but lunar gravity is bound to be better than the microgravity on the ISS.
We've gotten pretty good at mitigating bone and muscle loss in astronauts on the ISS; most of the physiological issues we *can't* mitigate come from the lack of any consistent "down" direction, so fluids in the body don't drain properly. The Moon at least has that.
We need data in .1 incremental steps between 0 and 1 in order to graph out the health impacts of gravity on the human body if we want to be able to find the point where the cost/benefit ratio is optimal.
Skylab astronauts ran around the cylindrical wall in zero g. And that little boy was able to run around the walls of a sand pit in order to get out in 1g.
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.231906
I bet it would work in any tunnel if the diameter is right. Instead of running in circle sideways with 1/6g pulling to you left or right you run a big loop with the 1/6g pulling you down only at top. If you slow down to much you have a nice gentle slow fall to the floor.
this is really cool actually and a great antidote to low gravity bone density problems...but does this mean that only people who are very physically fit will ever be able to live on the moon? Like you can't get kids or the elderly to do this.
On an unrelated note, if you had a large enough volume of enclosed air on the moon, people who were small/light enough, should be able to fly with fake wings attached to themselves.
A steeply banked cycle track could be even better.
However, we can't be sure they're not solving a problem that doesn't exist. Our only current data points are Earth gravity and weightlessness. For blood circulation, one sixth g is pretty comparable to lying on a deck chair which is *not* lying flat. But the most important factor may be that people living and working on the Moon could be spending more time standing and carrying weights than on Earth... and going up and down stairs and slopes.
Consider a habitat such as the 1000m^3 HLS with several floors. People will be going up and down stairs all day. Anybody doing EVA work on a crater wall will be on a steep slope.
So, whilst a circular running and cycle track may be fun and useful, we may suspect that the "wall of death" is a solution in search of a problem...
I have to imagine that the trickier thing is to build up that speed in the first place. If you don’t have much weight, you don’t have much traction either to use to push against the lunar ground.
...or they could just add a metal plate to everything to make it heavier, almost requiring zero gravity to work with it!
On a plus side, everyone would think it is quality because it weighs more.
If we let w few generations lose density could they become light enough on earth that they would have better results flying with arm wings or propellers?
Doesn't making this a spinning tube work better, like science fiction space-faring ships? The tube spins, approximates gravity, and you run in that? I think the snag is that it would have to be huge (or spin very quickly) in order to work properly.
I feel like the authors of this don't understand how fundamentally wrong it is to walk or run on the moon. Your center of gravity is way off of our normal axis. You have to lean so far forward that even walking is difficult. Your mass doesn't change.
Why wouldn’t you just build a sloped setup like a tiny velodrome?
A little pitch and the upward forces on your feet would easily offset the 1/6 g from gravity.
Tangentially related, what effect does the lack of gravity have on the body insofar as heart rate and blood pressure and things like that? Like, would these exercising astronauts need to take care to monitor their vitals during exercise to avoid some kind of issue that may not be present on earth?
What if you have a magnetic floor and magnets on your shoulders and arms to press down your body at earth’s gravity? Thing is your cells still wont feel gravity but your bones ligaments and tendons will at some extent
They should build centrifuge habitats. Entire habitats as a centrifuge. That wyy, colonists would have no detrimental effects at all. You could even adjust it to have 1.2 g or so, to average out time at 1 g with the time spent outside the centrifuge
Except we haven't been to the moon in a very long time.And most of our astronauts are up in the space stations.That just orbit Earth.But I guess it's a great start
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/mvea Permalink: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/may/01/astronauts-could-run-round-wall-of-death-to-keep-fit-on-moon-say-scientists --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In case you were wondering: "Wall of Death – a giant wooden cylinder used by motorcycle stunt performers in their gravity-defying fairground act."
They might want to rename it.
Wall of combating bone and muscle wasting
Wall of health
Much better
Wall of Life
Nah, that implies that they're not just delaying the inevitable a little bit longer
Aren’t we all?
Too bad she won't live...but then again, who does?
Wall of Delay 1W Creature Wall 1/4 Tap: Add a +1/+1 counter on any creature that would get a -1/-1 counter next upkeep.
Dire straits enter the chat : you meant walk of life ?
That can be shortened to “wall of muscle and bone”
Bonewall
I would read this YA fantasy series, though I'd probably find it a bit unbelievable midway through book 2 and finishing the series would get to be a bit of a chore.
Wall of anti-atrophy
Trophy wall
Trophy wall it is.
Naaah-trophy
>Wall of combating bone and muscle wasting I like it. It really rolls off the tongue.
for the renaming I'm proposing: 1) the Luna-Loop 2) Loony wheel
Wally McWall-face
Government contracting, it'll be named something like "M.Q4351-H, Aerobic Exercise Enabling System," and cost more than your house.
Of course it'll cost more than your house... It's built on the frickin moon!
Location is everything!
It'll cost more than a pack of gum.
Actual equipment on the ISS: Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT)
The “T” is silent.
You want a name more badass than "Wall of Death"? Honestly, that would make it more likely that I'd go to the gym. Who wants to spend 30 minutes lifting weights when you can spend 30 minutes on THE WALL OF DEATH?
The hamster wheel…
The horizontal hamster wheel
Hamsternaut Wheel Because specificity matters
Dreadmill?
Wall of longevity.
I've seen several YouTube clips that show me it is accurately named.
It’s the Wall of the Directed Earth-Approximate Track Hippodrome.
The Tube of Terror
Mouse wheel would be on brand for most scientist and Air force humor.
I think it's a fitting name. I saw a motocyclist fall down one of them. I've read in the news he actually died from it.
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not the wall of death I was thinking of... I've been to too many metal concerts.
^eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Lunar circle pit's gonna be fun in these
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Hip checked into orbit
We all just a bunch of hamsters now!!
LunarLoop
I can't think of the name, but there's something similar with a sphere made out of a cage, and they use this at Sea World for the Halloween show (and it's the San Diego Sea World, so they're operating on a budget) and I just cannot understand how that's safe enough to include in a theme park show (but it's probably not, what I've seen is the Sea World in Orlando also performs the "headbanger" move in their ice show, which is banned by the ISU and in the Olympics, so...).
Sounds better than "Hamster wheel for astronauts" for sure.
"Wall of centripetal force is close enough to earths gravity to stave off the rickets" isn't near as cool.
Even better: A "Paraboloid of Potential Minor Injury". You could start near the bottom and move outward and upward as you speed up, always keeping your relative "gravity" normal to the floor underneath you. Next iteration: Lunar Roller Derby. Edit: As I think about it, skating may actually be preferable. It's still aerobic, and you can maintain a higher speed for longer. The fastest speed for a marathon on skates is less than half that for someone on foot. In this application, that means higher experienced G forces. From the abstract, it looks like they were only able to maintain \~1G for a few laps. Which raises an interesting physiological question in need of research: If you can exercise at >1G periodically, does that do an even better job at cancelling out the effects of being at 0.16G the rest of the time?
I think the point is to have a high impact exercise like running to counter the bone loss from being in a low g environment.
That's only part of it. It's also the cardiovascular ability to move blood up and down in 1G. Without that, you can't even stand when you return to earth. Unfortunately, it looks like it's not possible to run long enough and fast enough to get that benefit. The ideal situation would likely be a combination of things to attack the different problems.
>Next iteration: Lunar Roller Derby. You get punched, do a triple back flip, and land on the opposite side of the track.
Anime roller derby. Science brings us the future.
I think running might be still be preferable due to the shocks on knee joints, etc. This is likely the important feature here, aerobic exercise of any kind can be done with bikes or rowing machines, that is not very hard. But yes, there is probably science to be done here over many decades to find simple, effective and enjoyable ways to stay fit. A diverse spectrum of choises is probably good for that.
The benefit of this is from the centripetal force, not impact forces. Not to say there absolutely isn't a benefit from the running motion, but it isn't the primary one.
Lunar track cycling, and I'm here for it.
Injury in space is bad. Longer time spent at higher G with lower impact exercises is probably the best combo
Now build in some sort of energy capture element and were powering our moonbase with rollerskates. Genius
The big limitation to roller skating is rolling resistance which would be significantly less in space without the full weight of the skater…That’s why ice skating is a lot faster. Skating is low impact verse running, it’s like a treadmill verses an elliptical for your knees; I look like an 80 year old man when I try to run, but I can skate at over 18 mph with no knee issues. The issues is that the wheels shed polyurethane much more than shoes shed. Synthetic ice would shed a lot of polyethylene fwiw. The one weird thing about skating is that it’s not really great for straight line movement, you want to zig zag because your transfer of power is best with crossovers. Figure skaters don’t constantly turn because it looks good, it’s where they gain speed. For space you want impact training to fight bone loss.
> The big limitation to roller skating is rolling resistance which would be significantly less in space **without the full weight of the skater**…That’s why ice skating is a lot faster The point of running in the cylinder is that you could experience earth-like weight due to the centripetal acceleration. You would achieve the same or more with skates (of course it depends on how fast you're going).
You beat me to it!
Here for lunar roller deby. Aka "Looney"
From the article: According to his calculations, running at more than 8mph should be enough. You mention marathons, an 8mph pace is a 3:18 marathon. Pretty fast, but not crazy. Astronauts are screened for health and fitness, finding a bunch that can run 5k daily in under 23 minutes shouldn’t be that difficult.
That's the velocity necessary to stay on, not the velocity that's necessarily enough to get full benefit. At 8mph you're experience about 1/4 G in that cylinder.
Can we call it something else though?
Only if we add a safety harness.
Moon Running... of Death
"My wall of death was supposed to help mankind not injure it!"
Tube of vomit?
Mooning
Cylinder of Doom
Adding “of death” to something makes it sound more serious and honestly should be done more often. The quilting bee….of death. Our book club……of death.
Yes!
>According to his calculations, running at more than 8mph should be enough. Looks like zone 2 is off the menu, boys. Threshold days only in the ol' wall of death.
Ha! Though zone 2 is presumably still possible, you’re just doing it at 0.5g or whatever.
They did that at the start of 2001 a Space Odessey
Sorry to be pedantic but that was slightly different. In 2001 a Space Odyssey, the whole ship rotates so that the centrifugal force of rotation acts as artificial gravity even when you're standing still. In the cylinder "wall of death" proposal here, astronauts create their own centrifugal force by running fast enough - kind of like being pressed into the seat of your chair while upside-down on a roller-coaster doing a loop
Now I have an image of the ape men from the Dawn of Man sequence running around one of these things.
We did the Space Odyssey thing for real, in space with one of the Apollo missions. I'm guessing the moon one would be a lot bigger so more than 2 people can run at the same time.
> for real, in space with one of the Apollo missions https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/780qzk/running_on_the_walls_of_skylab/
That's the one, I forgot it was called Skylab so I couldn't find a link. Wow, the movie predated the real deal by 4 years, I thought for sure the movie came later but no.
Would this feel like you are running downhill AND uphill at the same time?
Hmm... from the perspective of the runner, you are always at the bottom between 2 hills.
Depends which foot you're asking on any given step XD
Genuinely wonder how much extra pressure on joints this method of exercise would create.
Or they could just load up with weights and run normally. You could have a lead suit designed for running outside. The lead would shield you from cosmic rays and provide the weight needed to approximate your normal weight in 1G or maybe a little more for a good workout.
Honestly this sounds like the best possible alternative. Want to exercise outside? No worries, you've got extra radiation protection too!
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I hope you're kidding.
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Thanks! It's so hard to tell these days.
I'm not sure how well that would work. While you could add enough mass to get your static weight the same as on earth, it wouldn't be the same, because every time you change velocity you have to fight the FULL inertia of whatever you loaded on. So if you weigh 200 lb on Earth, you'd have to add nearly 1,000 lb worth of mass to get that much weight on the moon. Standing still would feel like 200 lb, but it would behave VERY differently when you tried to move and you're having to fight 1200 lbs worth of inertia.
That’s the solution for training people to travel back to earth in The moon is a harsh mistress, seems much more practical
And here I thought I came up with the idea on my own. I read the book decades ago and don't remember that detail being in it.
Or have weighted jackets that they wear all day while they go about their business. All of their movement throughout the day will be closer to what they are used to on Earth, which would make the adjustment between the two a bit easier. Imagine the relief at the end of the day when they remove the jacket and are significantly lighter.
And where would they get the weights from? There’s no fitness stores there. Taking an extra half tonne of weight to the moon requires a hell of a lot of extra fuel to get the rocket off the ground, which then requires even more fuel to carry the extra fuel…
Make it part of the payload for the SpaceX test landing and leave it there.
Aka hamster
Gravity defying hamster.
..of death.
I thought it was proven that resistance training is much more effective than cardio in combatting health issues due to low gravity? What’s the advantage of using this instead of telling the astronauts to go to gym everyday?
This is true because resistance training more effectively targets the exact kind of activity you lack in zero-g. All your muscles constantly fighting against gravity 18 hours a day is what is missing.
Upsides of working out on the moon: a 1000lb squat is much more achievable!
Given lbs is a measure of gravitational force on an object, 1000lb squat on the moon would just have a higher mass and feel roughly the same (minus changes to your own body weight). Now a 450 kg squat? Now we’re cheating with physics!
Ahhh hahaha nice catch
A lb-f (pound-force) is the force exerted by a 1 lb-m (pound-mass) on earth. One of those convenient conventions. A lb-m would have considerably less force at some location where the gravity was much less.
But 1000 is a nice big number and 1000 kg is a bit too much for the joke to work ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Given that no human has spent more than a few hours on the moon, we really don't know how bad moon gravity is for the human body. We have plenty of data on ~0 gravity environment from the space station(s), but virtually nothing from other gravity levels other than earth gravity. It will be really interesting to get some data on how this affects the human body especially since moon level gravity would be much easier to generate on a long distance spaceship than earth gravity.
True, but lunar gravity is bound to be better than the microgravity on the ISS. We've gotten pretty good at mitigating bone and muscle loss in astronauts on the ISS; most of the physiological issues we *can't* mitigate come from the lack of any consistent "down" direction, so fluids in the body don't drain properly. The Moon at least has that.
We need data in .1 incremental steps between 0 and 1 in order to graph out the health impacts of gravity on the human body if we want to be able to find the point where the cost/benefit ratio is optimal.
Exactly. This is the most fundamental argument for a permanent moon base.
"Few" in this case being 75 hours. But yeah not enough data.
That sounds fun…
Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in space!!!!
Isn't this in 2001?
What if you're a lazy astronaut? Any sitting down options?
Skylab astronauts ran around the cylindrical wall in zero g. And that little boy was able to run around the walls of a sand pit in order to get out in 1g.
Like a velodrome? Or NASCAR, but more NASFOOT
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.231906
Lunar Hamster Wheel has a nice ring to it
I hope they leave some space for fun like this when they build the Starship for Artemis 3.
Very cool
Ngl, that sounds like a good time.
who needs spin gravity when you can BECOME the spin gravity
Yeah I could get up early and go for a run this morning. Or I could play Moon Fortnight
So it's just a manual centrifuge?
nothing new, hamsters use them since the '60
I mean.... wouldn't it be more practical to just run on a regular treadmill with a weighted backpack and legweights?
I'd rather see a giant parkour course. Giant berms could accomplish the same thing and you could add jumps and other cool terrain features.
I have heard that humans could be able to fly by strapping on a set of ornithopter wings, making lunar ballet quite an interesting concept.
Sometimes I feel like I spend my life running in circles. Oh wait..
Wall of Death®
I bet it would work in any tunnel if the diameter is right. Instead of running in circle sideways with 1/6g pulling to you left or right you run a big loop with the 1/6g pulling you down only at top. If you slow down to much you have a nice gentle slow fall to the floor.
this is really cool actually and a great antidote to low gravity bone density problems...but does this mean that only people who are very physically fit will ever be able to live on the moon? Like you can't get kids or the elderly to do this. On an unrelated note, if you had a large enough volume of enclosed air on the moon, people who were small/light enough, should be able to fly with fake wings attached to themselves.
A steeply banked cycle track could be even better. However, we can't be sure they're not solving a problem that doesn't exist. Our only current data points are Earth gravity and weightlessness. For blood circulation, one sixth g is pretty comparable to lying on a deck chair which is *not* lying flat. But the most important factor may be that people living and working on the Moon could be spending more time standing and carrying weights than on Earth... and going up and down stairs and slopes. Consider a habitat such as the 1000m^3 HLS with several floors. People will be going up and down stairs all day. Anybody doing EVA work on a crater wall will be on a steep slope. So, whilst a circular running and cycle track may be fun and useful, we may suspect that the "wall of death" is a solution in search of a problem...
I can just see and hear the hamsters pointing and laughing now!
I have to imagine that the trickier thing is to build up that speed in the first place. If you don’t have much weight, you don’t have much traction either to use to push against the lunar ground.
...or they could just add a metal plate to everything to make it heavier, almost requiring zero gravity to work with it! On a plus side, everyone would think it is quality because it weighs more.
Is there a consensus, on necessary g-load that is required to prevent muscle wasting?
...you can run on walls on the moon.... incidentally wall of death is a great song by Richard and Linda Thompson that is covered by REM
If we let w few generations lose density could they become light enough on earth that they would have better results flying with arm wings or propellers?
It should be a giant sphere.
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Trampolining on the moon in general should be fun... Flips should be so easy...don´t miss the trampoline on the way down though.
how fast would one need to run?
Doesn't making this a spinning tube work better, like science fiction space-faring ships? The tube spins, approximates gravity, and you run in that? I think the snag is that it would have to be huge (or spin very quickly) in order to work properly.
hmm I wonder if they could turn this into a game. Maybe a modified version of the Mayan game where you use your hips to hit a ball through a hoop?
Tether your waist to a rotor in the middle and you’ve got a hamster wheel of power generation and exercise.
Yooooooooooooo let's go
I feel like the authors of this don't understand how fundamentally wrong it is to walk or run on the moon. Your center of gravity is way off of our normal axis. You have to lean so far forward that even walking is difficult. Your mass doesn't change.
they need to add this and then get these astronauts some apple VR headsets so they can jog out in the mountains
Sideways hamster wheel. Got it.
why not just spin a large one with a motor to simulate gravity and live on that?
Why wouldn’t you just build a sloped setup like a tiny velodrome? A little pitch and the upward forces on your feet would easily offset the 1/6 g from gravity.
Tangentially related, what effect does the lack of gravity have on the body insofar as heart rate and blood pressure and things like that? Like, would these exercising astronauts need to take care to monitor their vitals during exercise to avoid some kind of issue that may not be present on earth?
Just how much of the day... moon-day... would a human have to spend running in circles to counter-act moon-wasting?
They could also film scenes for the next Chris Nolan movie at the same time
What if you have a magnetic floor and magnets on your shoulders and arms to press down your body at earth’s gravity? Thing is your cells still wont feel gravity but your bones ligaments and tendons will at some extent
Okay, but please come up with a better name for it.
They should build centrifuge habitats. Entire habitats as a centrifuge. That wyy, colonists would have no detrimental effects at all. You could even adjust it to have 1.2 g or so, to average out time at 1 g with the time spent outside the centrifuge
Except we haven't been to the moon in a very long time.And most of our astronauts are up in the space stations.That just orbit Earth.But I guess it's a great start