Rocket Science for Earthlings 47
a continuing series for the gravitationally impaired
TASTE, SMELL, TOUCH, HEARING, SIGHT. These senses have served humans well for millions of years. They developed to fit the environment of planet earth. In the future it will be necessary to more fully develop another sense usually latent in humans, the sense of gravity. Whenever you go around a corner in a car you use your sense of gravity to compensate for the lateral centrifugal force. Pilots and astronauts have a better developed sense of gravity because they are exposed to wide variations in force. It has been found that human beings can quickly compensate for changes in gravity and the dizzying effects of coriolis (the sideways drift of moving objects in a spinning environment). But the periods of zero gee are short, and tend to be an all or nothing sort of thing. For the residents of a space habitat life will be a constant compensation for changes in gravity and spin rate. Moving from inner sections to outer sections of a spinning colony will require a fine sense of determining the level of gravity and spin rate. For someone born on a space habitat this will become second nature, but for earth types and the aged with dulled senses life may be mostly restricted to one section with fairly constant gravity and spin.