Scott Solomon

You know, imagine a ball that's the Earth, and then you take a rubber band that's bigger than that ball, and then you kind of pinch it in the middle around the ball.

So you've got this kind of two sort of orbs coming out from the Earth, and that's the shape of the Van Allen radiation belts.

yeah so you know first of all it takes something like six to nine months just to get there so you're talking about you've been traveling through space microgravity right weightlessness for for you know let's say six months right so your body is going through all those things that we were just talking about your your muscles have become weaker your bones have become more brittle the fluids have redistributed

That has other effects like on our eyes.

The vision actually has a tendency to get worse.

So that's all happening.

Then you arrive on Mars and let's assume that the landing goes well and you are now on the surface.

Now, all of a sudden, you're in a one third gravity environment.

Three eighths, about one third gravity environment compared to Earth's gravity.

So you went from weightlessness to one third G. And so now all of a sudden there's all this weight, all this force on your body.

Exactly.

And so, you know, if you look at like, you know, anytime astronauts come back from from being in space, they need a lot of help in order just to get out of the spacecraft to walk.

It's like there's a long adjustment period.

So one of the things is just immediately like that, even though it's just one third G, you

that's gonna be hard on somebody that has been in a weightless environment for that amount of time.

So if there's nobody else there to help you,

Just even getting out of your spacecraft might be tricky.

Right.

Yeah, no, you're right.

So, I mean, astronauts do a lot of exercise in space.