Comment by dotancohen
4 days ago
If we were on a planet with significantly lower gravity, walking would be much more difficult. Notably, on flat ground we absolutely must have an upward component to our application of force with the surface - this is clearly seen in videos taken on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions. This baby on a hypothetical lower gravity world would find standing easier, yes, but not mobility. At least not once he's taken his first few trail steps.
If gravity were lower we would have evolved differently, walking would have adapted too. On the other hand babies probably wouldn't be able to walk either. Being mobile, defenseless, and not having "runaway!" as the default defense mechanism (like horses) is an evolutionary dead end.
Sure we might have evolved differently. But that doesn't mean that the human body doesn't work better at sustained 0.8G or 1.2G or whatever.
Problem is we don't have any good data about which gravitational accelerations would be suitable for long term health. We have 1g as our baseline, and we know that months in 0g messes you up and longer is a bad idea. We don't know anything about the long-term effects of living in Mars or Lunar gravity though. It could be studied using von Braun stations, but nobody has done it.
The moon has very little gravity bringing extra problems, but maybe Mars would have the right gravity to enable Babies walk from the beginning?
If you enjoy this kind of speculating you might like the Expanse series of books and TV shows.
They have humans growing up on Mars, the asteroid belt, moons. Anyone who doesn’t grow up on earth cannot go there without extreme gravity training.
I did enjoy the first season of the series, but then was turned off by some story arcs, but maybe I will give it a try again. Are the books more consistent?
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That series strived for realism in that regard, and in using magnetic boots to work in zero gravity; which was admirable. That made the things that were not realistic stand out even more imo. The (unfortunately named) Epstein drive, a drive that consumes very little mass under constant acceleration allows for relativistic speeds in very little time (weeks). Their ships were flying from one side of the solar system to the other in weeks, but they couldn’t make interstellar flights? Also the effects of cosmic rays and hard radiation on reproduction makes the disaffected belter population seem impossible. That’s all fine of course, just inconsistent imo.
Shohreh Aghdashloo performance was a real treat though!
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Walking would probably suck on such a planet and we would see babies bounding long distances instead!