「经济学人」Lunar living

Running around the inside of a barrel might help

Motorcyclists seeking to cement their reputation as daredevils could do worse than book a session on a Wall of Death. These are small circular velodromes where the track, instead of being lightly raked, is completely vertical. Viewed from above, the effect is of riders zooming around the inside of a washing machine.

What drives these brave souls up the wall is their speed. At around 50kph, the forces acting on them are strong enough to counterbalance gravity’s pull, and keep them pushed outward.

Now a group of scientists have found another use for these contraptions: keeping future Moon-dwellers fit. In a paper in Royal Society Open Science, they propose that astronauts living on nasa’s planned lunar base could run horizontally to prevent their bodies from wasting away under the Moon’s reduced gravitational pull.

In low-gravity environments, muscle atrophies, bone becomes brittle and fitness and motor skills deteriorate. Even exercise, rendered less effective by weightlessness, struggles to counteract such effects. Alberto Minetti from the University of Milan wondered if running in a Wall of Death—impossible on Earth—might provide a workout capable of limiting the body’s decline. To test it he rented a 10-metre-wide Wall of Death and called in two brave volunteers.

His team strapped the volunteers, a man and a woman, to bungee rubber cords hanging from a crane above the track. The cords relieved the volunteers of five-sixths of their body weight, in effect mimicking the Moon’s gravity. After some practice rounds, the volunteers could run parallel to the ground at speeds averaging around 20 kilometres per hour, without assistance.

Dr Minetti says such motion can generate a force on the body similar to the effect of gravity on Earth. According to his calculations, running this way may be enough to combat the withering effects of lunar life. nasa may not even need to find extra room: he suggests that if the lunar cabins for the Artemis Base Camp were built in a circular design, astronauts could simply go for a jog around the inside walls.

In principle it is “not a completely bonkers idea,” says Kevin Fong, a doctor and specialist in space medicine at University College London. But, he adds, the limited medical care available in space means he would be nervous about astronauts running at speed. The name “Wall of Death”, after all, is meant only to be a metaphor.(May 9th 2024)

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