it will be possible to do for everyone but is it worth it so
in the last two years especially since the creation of the International Space
Station back in late 90s our understanding of dangers of space has increased
dramatically now if I were to ask you what do you think is the most dangerous
thing in space I think most people would probably say radiation and with most
people I know and that is true it is quite high and there's a lot of cosmic
radiation that can technically produce a lot of damage in a human body that is
not the most dangerous thing as a matter of fact over the years we've discovered
that a lot of things go wrong with human body when you place it in conditions
in zero-gravity and so the paper that was just recently released discovered
something else a little bit scary something that is reported right here and
we're going to briefly discuss it in this video but let's actually summarize
all the dangers of essentially going to International Space Station and staying
there for like just a few days maybe a month.
So some of these dangers begin with your vision we've
discovered over the years that pretty much most of the astronauts report either
blurry vision or complete loss of vision at some point and this most likely has
something to do with the fact that gravity is required for our eyes to function
correctly now this is something that we may never actually overcome and we'll
probably just have to find a way to fix vision problems in astronauts if they
ever occur on the way to Mars for example because for example if suddenly one
of the pilots loses his vision in the middle of a Martian mission this could be
pretty dangerous now there are other problems we've also discovered that due to
the lack of gravity the water content of our lung begins to actually arm rice
and sometimes quite dramatically now this doesn't mean that one day an astronaut
is going to drown in their own liquid by being in space but the danger of
having a liquid in your lungs is nevertheless there it might actually damage
the ones although interest knowing even though water was discovered in the
lungs of many astronauts so far what we've realized is that our lungs can adapt
to these situations pretty quickly.
But there is another problem with lungs and that's related
to dust in zero-gravity unfortunately our lungs have serious problem dealing
with dust specifically the dust that gets him healed and then deposited inside
the lungs unfortunately the absence of gravity allows dust to get deposited
much more deeply inside the lungs and makes it really difficult to try to expel
it afterwards which could technically lead to some serious problems an actual
lung disease that could develop with him I just say a few months of being in space
filled with dusty air that could either come from actual human skin or that
could come from objects like Mars and moon the lunar dust pacifically could be
very dangerous to us it's so fine and so little that it could easily damage the
lungs of astronauts living on the moon so in that sense a low gravity or no
gravity is pretty bad news for dusty environments we'll definitely have to come
up with technologies that will allow us to clean the air very efficiently
allowing no dust to remain in it and being in space also leads to other
problems of course such as muscle problems muscle weakness and various types of
vertical and disorientation but the scariest problem is the one that was just
discovered and that problem relates to blood flow it seems that when these
scientists behind this paper investigated 11 astronauts they've discovered that
six of them had a very serious problem with blood flow where the blood inside
their neck in the so called jugular vein has either stopped completely or even
reversed its flow in other words deep blood was circulating in the opposite
direction which could potentially lead to some serious problems now nothing has
been discovered so far in terms of the actual effects of all of this but
hypothetically an astronaut could definitely completely pass out or even die
and that is the scary part if the blood flow stops for let us say 20 seconds or
if it starts flowing in Reverse for 15 to 20 seconds the Astrid would
definitely pass out I know though officially the heart is supposed to pump
blood in one direction it seems that the effects of the blood flow depends
directly on the gravity.
They do depend on having this force pulling on the blood
channels and allowing them to create the flow in one direction and if this
problem persists it can definitely lead to a serious brain problem including of
course the potential of brain damage or death so this discovery is so far one
of the most worrisome one of these scariest about the potential effects of
zero-g so does this mean that we need to stop exploring space well no
absolutely not quite the opposite as a matter of fact we have to start doing
even more in regards to space exploration so that we can actually discover
techniques that will help us prevent all this from happening because this would
actually combine the various types of health studies and medicine with space
exploration it would also most likely lead to some incredible discoveries in
medicine because that's usually how it works the discoveries that NASA made in
medicine have already improved the life here on earth quite dramatically for
example you might be already familiar that MRI machines were technically invented
by NASA back in the 60s.
A lot of the technology that came from the original space
exploration missions didn't just wait to the creation of the ISS it also led to
various types of machines as we used today in medicine and also when it comes
to being in space it's not actually all bad news as a matter of fact there is
at least one case when being in space actually saved someone's life James Irwin
who you can see right here was one of the astronauts on the Apollo 15 mission
that did get to land on the moon and not just land on it but also walk around
here collect certain types of rocks from the surface and then bring them back
to earth and during the mission when the rocks were being transferred from the
lunar landing module he actually had a heart attack or at least something
resembling a heretic because it seems that in zero-g heretic doesn't really
affect humans with these same effects so the arrhythmia that he had in his
heart would have actually killed him if he was on earth but because his body
was not in earth gravity but instead in zero-g while at the same time receiving
a huge amount of oxygen and being constantly monitored this prevented his heart
from completely giving up the strain on his heart was no longer there and so he
was able to survive this making him technically the first ever person to
survive a heart attack in space although unfortunately James did eventually
pass away here on earth and was also the youngest a lunar Explorer to die he
was only 61 when he passed away and so in that sense zero-g helped his heart it
saved his heart and his life which also suggests that maybe one day we'll find
a way to treat people with heart problems by sending them to these zero-g
conditions in space and having them undergo various treatments there maybe this
is how we'll solve a lot of problems that are not solvable here on earth and so
it's actually quite exciting that in the last 20 years we were able to discover
so many different things related to Health Sciences in space and so many
different problems that we now have to solve or at the same time discovering
things that do improve our life in space but in order for us to continue the
space mission and in order for us to continue exploring and becoming an
interstellar species we definitely have to take our space exploration mission
to the next level and that means mission to the moon mission to Mars and
possibly mission to other objects as well Titan for example well anyway so not
note check out the paper I mention in a description below and watch out for
other videos that will talk about the exploration of space and both dangers and
excitement of doing so in one of the future videos we'll also discuss some
other potential problems with for example a mission to the moon and other
hazards that we need to watch out.
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