ORIENTATION AND MOVEMENT IN UNUSUAL FORCE ENVIRONMENTS

A manned space mission to Mars might take as long as 1 year each way. Consequently, artificial gravity is being considered as a way of preve nting the debilitating effects of long-duration exposure to microgravi ty on the human body. The present article discusses some of the proble ms associated with adapting to the rotation levels that might be used to generate artificial gravity. It also describes how exposure to back ground-force levels greater or less than the 1-G force of Earth gravit y affects orientation and movement control. The primary emphasis of th e article is that human movement and orientation control are dynamical ly adapted to the 1-G force background of Earth and that accommodation to altered force levels or to rotating environments requires a wide r ange of adaptive changes.