A recent NASA study examined what it would be like for people to run on the moon, without the restrictions of the Apollo mission era space suits. Three astronauts and five people who registered as test subjects ran on a treadmill inside of an airplane that can reduce its internal gravity to lunar levels.
A recent NASA study examined what it would be like for people to run on the moon, without the restrictions of the Apollo mission era space suits.
Three astronauts and five people who registered as test subjects ran on a treadmill inside of an airplane that can reduce its internal gravity to lunar levels.
The subjects each took twenty seconds on the treadmill while the plane was in low gravity, and the researchers measured how
fast they were able to go from walking to running speed.
The results of the study show that the participants actually reached a running speed faster than previous estimates had predicted was possible with lunar type gravity levels.
John De Witt, a senior biomechanist at the NASA Johnson Space Center and co-author of the study is quoted as saying: “What I think ends up happening is that even though the atmosphere is lunar gravity, the effective gravity on our system is lunar gravity plus the forces generated by our swinging arms and legs.”
DeWitt also thinks that this same effect of added momentum from our arms and legs swinging while we run happens on Earth, but it is insignificant because of the higher level of gravity felt on our planet.
