Abstract
The effects of long-term reduced (lunar) gravity are very much unknown. The Apollo Program represents our only experience with humans in extended lunar gravity. Those exposures were brief, but few if any major medical issues were encountered that cannot be ascribed to issues other than reduced gravity. Animal experiments will be of great value in elucidating partial-g effects, but they have uncertain transfer to human responses; the best of these experiments are being performed now (2021) with rodents on an ISS centrifuge. We might expect that some of the main physiological issues that occur in extended weightlessness (e.g., ISS) will manifest also in extended lunar gravity, but this is far from certain. The reduced but non-zero gravity level on the moon may well be sufficient to halt or dramatically reduce the main aspects of physiological deconditioning seen in weightlessness. Those aspects that are not sufficiently alleviated in this way might benefit from additional exercise and intermittent exposures to higher gravity levels.
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Shelhamer, M. (2021). Consideration of the Long-Term Effects of Hypogravity. In: Rappaport, M.B., Szocik, K. (eds) The Human Factor in the Settlement of the Moon. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81388-8_7
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