What Would Happen if You Were Born in Space?

In a world where commercial space flights are genuinely in the pipeline, anything can happen. In the future, it could even be possible that a heavily pregnant woman travels to space and gives birth in a zero-gravity environment. It’s quite a far-fetched scenario, but if it did happen, what effect would it have? Would the baby survive?

First of all, a foetus developing in space would encounter a lot of problems. So the woman would have to be ready give birth as she enters space. When the baby is born, it would be relatively normal, although the procedure would be much messier with all the floating fluids.

Muscles

As most people know, for any sort of muscle development, you need to put stress on the muscles. Gravity is really what puts this stress on muscles on Earth. So when you lift an object, or even just lift your leg, it’s gravity that is pulling against your muscle. Without gravity, then, your muscles won’t have any stress put on them and so they won’t grow or develop very much.

Leg muscles and arm muscles wouldn’t be able to function back on Earth. However, more crucially, the heart muscle would have been circulating blood much more easily as there would be no gravity to strain the process. So again, the heart muscle wouldn’t develop. This means a baby returning to Earth would not have a strong enough heart to pump blood against the force of gravity.

Bones

Similar to muscles, bones need gravity to grow properly. Gravity pulls your bones into the right formation, allowing them to grow stronger. Yes, bones are always going to grow in a baby, but without the strain, like muscles require, they will grow weak. Some bones will be affected more than others:

• Arms and legs will grow into easily breakable, weak bones.
• The spinal cord’s vertebrae won’t develop. Its growth will result in a thin spinal cord, made up of easily breakable vertebrae.
• Ribs will develop much thinner.
• Hands will develop the same, as they will do mostly the same thing.
• Feet will grow less because of no pressure from body weight.
• The skull would actually be stronger. The lack of gravity means blood can be easily transferred up the body. Consequently, the skull would receive more pressure and grow thicker.

The human body is fascinating. Not only the way it grows, but also the way it develops and carries DNA. Since its discovery is 1869, the study of DNA has developed vastly. It’s now used for a wide range of purposes, even identification in law. DNA Technology: 150 Years of Research and Development looks into how DNA works in forensic science.