What Nine Months in Space Does to the Human Body
do a number on: to cause a lot of damage or harm to someone or something
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to spend eight days in space. Their spacecraft had technical problems, so NASA could not safely bring them home for nine long months. When they finally returned to Earth, their bodies were not the same.
Zero gravity does a number on the human body, and not in ways most people expect. Fluid moves up toward the head, so astronauts’ faces swell and their vision blurs. Their legs grow thin and weak because they never have to stand. Clothes float away from the body all day, and the skin slowly loses its rough, protective layer. When astronauts come home, normal cotton can feel like sandpaper. Doctors call this strange condition “baby-like skin.”
The changes go deeper too. Bones lose density, sometimes permanently. Even the heart gets smaller because it has less work to do in weightless conditions. Muscles also shrink in the arms, legs, and chest. Oddly, astronauts grow slightly taller in orbit as the spine decompresses without gravity. After they land, they slowly shrink back to their original height.
Wilmore and Williams now spend hours each day walking and exercising to rebuild what they lost. Their skin will toughen up. Their eyes will clear. But full recovery can take many months.
We usually think of space travel as brave and heroic. And it is. But the astronauts who come back to Earth are not the same people who left. Their bodies carry the cost of being somewhere humans were never meant to live.
Sample sentences
That stomach bug really did a number on me. I lost five pounds in three days.
Years of long hours at the computer have done a number on her back.
The salt air really does a number on cars near the coast. You can see rust within a year.
