National Geographic is sponsoring this video and sending me on a

Microgravity experience - a vomit comet

Come on this plane flies in a series of parabolic arcs so that if and everything inside can essentially be in freefall

creating a microgravity environment

the plane can also simulate the gravity on other bodies like the Moon and Mars

by modifying the parabola if I were really going to Mars I would experience not 30 seconds of microgravity as I do in this

plane but eight months of it and then when I got to Mars this would be the gravity on the surface

This is what it would be like to be on the surface of Mars there the gravity is only about

37%

of what it is on earth which means you'd be able to jump

Much higher if you're an

Average jumper on earth you get double the airtime on Mars and have no problem at all dunking on a regulation basketball hoop

The

Moon, the gravity is only

1/6 of what it is here on earth so you could really do a lot of

crazy

aerobics without being exhausted one major issue

With low gravity is that it's not very easy to exercise. I mean you're used to the fact that your arm weighs about

5% of your body weight so just

Lifting your arm and regular G is a little bit of a workout you don't get any of that

when you are

Traveling to Mars and you only get a fraction of it when you're actually on Mars on a journey to Mars as on the space

station your muscles would weaken and shrink they would atrophy

Studies have shown that muscle mass can decrease by up to 20%

On space flights lasting just 5 to 11 days so you'd have to exercise

lifting weights would be useless

So you'd have to rely on

Elastic resistance for example on the space station astronauts are

elastically tethered to a treadmill and they typically exercise two and a half hours everyday

Even so the lack of weight pushing on bones results in a decrease in bone density

Astronauts can lose one to two percent of bone

Mass per month mostly in their lower extremities that's over 10 times faster bone loss than people on earth experience through

Osteoporosis as they get older and in weightless conditions other forces become significant like the surface tension of water

everyday activities become a lot more challenging, even things like washing your face Oh

probably gonna hat

That is crazy look at the surface tension the water holds it together like that

Dealing with liquids and microgravity is really difficult which makes showering brushing your teeth and going to the bathroom much harder

it's one of the most challenging things

I got just gonna up my nose

Got it in the absence of Earth's gravity you would

Also notice some strange effects like what happens when I spin this I showed how on earth this disc flips

Heaviside up when you spin it so I wanted to see what happens in microgravity right here

Do you see it flipping back and forth

did you see that

let me slow it down so you can see it better the disc actually flips back and forth

The hole goes from one side to the other and back

Watch which side of the disc the hole is on first its facing towards me and then it flips away from me and

Now it's towards me again and now it's away from me

This effect has

actually been seen on the space station with a t-bar handle it's an example of the intermediate axis theorem that is

Rotation about an intermediate axis not the least or a greatest moment of inertia is

Unstable and any tiny disturbance will cause it to rotate about another axis as well

in addition to dealing with microgravity on a trip to Mars you would

also

Be exposed to significant amounts of radiation when it's bedtime on orbit normally you fall asleep pretty quickly because because you're tired

but once in a while you have your eyes closed and you're not asleep yet and

you occasionally will see a flash of light it's some sort of

Human body reaction to the radiation from the universe

And we think it is heavy particles or

individual

Bursts of energy coming from radiation that are either going through the eyeball itself

Or going through the optic nerve a picture back to the first astronauts who must have closed their eyes and seen that radiation and going

I'm not going to tell anybody about this because

No, one's told me about I'm not talking I can just imagine the first two guys that said hey

I am sometimes I see flashes of light do you see flashes of light and then

Oh, we all see flashes alike. Oh okay, well that's that's alright then

to me all of these difficulties represent not deal breakers but challenges to be overcome for

Humans to guarantee our long-term survival we must become a multiplanetary species on mars

Simply stepping into a spacesuit which currently weigh as much as

310 pounds would make you feel about as heavy as you are on earth

So, maybe you wouldn't feel like a basketball star after all but this would

also, allow you to maintain your muscle and bone mass

it's not that hard to shield yourself for radiation you can put it into the

Insulation of the ship you can use water of course it's a terrific radiation

Absorber so you can shield the ship but you can't ignore it and of course

One of the major challenges of different gravity is the nausea that it brings our bodies are not necessarily

evolved to be these different gravity situations

so, we've just gone through 50 parabolas I don't know if I could last many more before I start to

Lose, my breakfast you know what I'm saying

but you know our bodies evolved for millions of years in

9.8. M/s^2 gravity

if we ever moved to Mars then actually established qualities and live there our evolution may take us in

very different directions

Thanks to the National Geographic Channel for sending me on this zero-g. Adventure it's truly awesome

Life on Mars may be closer than you think check out national Geographics new season of Mars on Monday November 12th at 9/8 central