Pregnancy in weightlessness

From: Dr. Omni [mailto:dromni@...]

If zero-g pregnancy is possible, perhaps there will be space colonies with
no artificial gravity at all, with thousands of skinny, elongated, oddly
shaped human beings floating inside. Yes, of course this "weightless
people", born and raised in a zero-g environment, probably would never be
able to visit Earth (or, who knows, perhaps not even the Moon); maybe their
bones would crack under their own weight, maybe they would not even be able
to move their chests up and down to breathe. But would they care? Perhaps
they would see environments with gravity as a primal, though hostile,
environment, in the same way that we see deep sea as a primal environment
that nevertheless is not suitable for the kind of live that we, terrestrial
animal, live right now. Since they would have anything that they need in
space, never being able to visit that primal environment would not be a big
issue.

This was pretty much the view of J. D. Bernal. Marshal Savage suggests
living permanently in 0 G, and if I were him, I would adopt this argument as
well. Instead he suggests we'll live in 0 G, but will maintain our Earthly
physiques via technological means.

Perhaps they could even thrive more easily than people living in
rotating habitats, since microgravity habitats would have less demanding
engineering requirements and could reach really humongous sizes.

The construction might be more monolithic, and hence simpler, but wrt larger
sizes I'm not so sure there'd be a significant advantage. It turns out the
primary load on the shell of a space habitat is not the centrifugal force,
it's the air pressure.

It occurs to me that space people still used to at least a small amount of
gravity may be able to travel farther and faster than those used to none at
all should continuous acceleration space drives ever come along. But that's
a very remote prospect, I hasten to add.

Regards,

Mike Combs

From:
Dr. Omni [mailto:dromni@...]

If zero-g pregnancy is possible, perhaps there will be space colonies with
no artificial gravity at all, with thousands of skinny, elongated, oddly
shaped human beings floating inside. Yes, of course this "weightless
people", born and raised in a zero-g environment, probably would never be
able to visit Earth (or, who knows, perhaps not even the Moon); maybe their
bones would crack under their own weight, maybe they would not even be able
to move their chests up and down to breathe. But would they care? Perhaps
they would see environments with gravity as a primal, though hostile,
environment, in the same way that we see deep sea as a primal environment
that nevertheless is not suitable for the kind of live that we, terrestrial
animal, live right now. Since they would have anything that they need in
space, never being able to visit that primal environment would not be a big
issue.

This was pretty much the view of J. D. Bernal. Marshal Savage suggests living permanently in 0 G, and if I were him, I would adopt this argument as well. Instead he suggests we'll live in 0 G, but will maintain our Earthly physiques via technological means.

Perhaps they could even thrive more easily than people living in
rotating habitats, since microgravity habitats would have less demanding
engineering requirements and could reach really humongous sizes.

The construction might be more monolithic, and hence simpler, but wrt larger sizes I'm not so sure there'd be a significant advantage. It turns out the primary load on the shell of a space habitat is not the centrifugal force, it's the air pressure.

It occurs to me that space people still used to at least a small amount of gravity may be able to travel farther and faster than those used to none at all should continuous acceleration space drives ever come along. But that's a very remote prospect, I hasten to add.

Regards,
Mike Combs