Weight suit on mars
Reduced gravity and your health
If you’ve ever taken an extended break from your regular workout routine, like an entire year plus during covid, then you’ll have noticed that it’s quite different getting back into it compared to when you were just maintaining. Reintroducing yourself to working out can be pretty horrible. If you don't workout while on your way to Mars your body will adjust to being in space and by the time you arive you'll be incredibly weakened. Similarly, if you don't exercise on Mars then a return to earth could leave you medically nonfunctional.In space
You’re going to go through that when you arrive planet side after any interplanetary voyage. What can be done about it in space is fairly well studied. Nasa has several machines that can be used in zero g and they’ve even determined that 2 hours per day is the average required to prevent serious issues. Working out is really the only option. Electric stimulation is the only other thing I can think of that might help and I don't see that cutting it.
Image credit: High-Tech Weights for Space Workout https://www.wired.com/2009/04/astromuscles2/
On Mars
But what about on Mars? While Martian gravity is less than on earth, it’s still going to provide resistance and make it possible to do strength training by lifting weights. The weights might need to be larger for them to weigh as much as on earth. They also won’t fall as fast on Mars so building a spring or bungee loaded workout machine might be helpful since everything falls at the same rate regardless of its weight.Weight suit
Another consideration is wearing a weight suit all day long. It’s possible that everyone on Mars will be incredibly busy. It stands to reason that burning 2 hours every day working out might be a bit of a bother. Enter the all day weight suit. If you weigh 200 pounds on earth you’ll weigh 75.88 pounds on Mars. If you wear a 124.12 pound suit, evenly distributed over your body, then your bones and muscles will still be used to moving around your 200 pound body when you return to earth. If you make the suit on Mars then you just need to make sure that on Mars, while wearing the suit, the scale reads 200 pounds. If you bring it with you from earth then it’ll need to weigh 327.15 pounds by itself on earth for it to weigh 124.12 pounds on Mars.Here's an image of how to distribute weight on a human body from a paper by Zeagler, Clint:
Ideally you'd want something so comfortable that you could wear a pressure suit overtop of it when you go outside the habitat. Or you could wear a backpack that adds even more weight and still comfortably walk around. It'll be a little tricky and will take some tweaking. To get used to it you'd want to wear an actual 124.12 pound suit while on earth but most of us would find that pretty hard to do while our bodies already weigh 200 pounds. If you can get comfortable with the extra weight in earth gravity though, you'll be just fine on Mars.
So what's it going to feel like wearing a 124.12 pound suit on Mars? Well, since it's weighs 327.15 pounds on earth, that means it will actually feel like 124.12 pounds on Mars cause that's how much it'll weigh. The only difference between wearing that suit on Mars and wearing a similar suit, that weighs 124.12 pounds, on earth, is that on Mars, it, and you wearing it, will fall at 38% the speed you would normally fall on earth. You're not going to be able to jump any higher or move any faster while wearing the suit on Mars. That's the point. It's canceling out the effects of lighter gravity. It's supposed to feel very similar to how you would feel when moving around on earth. You might notice that if you trip and fall it takes twice as long to hit the ground though.
It might look something like this:
It'll look that way if you're wearing bags of something dense. In this case I think the outfit is filled with iron shavings. I'm not sure if metal shavings are going to be readily abundant on Mars. It's possible they will. Maybe there'll be plenty of scrap that anyone can do whatever they want with. Or in the fab lab you'll be able to scrounge for any parts you want. I think it's much more likely that you'll have to come up with your own weight materials or bring them with you from earth. If you're using something found on Mars, odds are it'll be less dense than Iron and therefore you'll look more like you have heavy pillows or burlap sacks of dirt or whatever you're using for weight, tied to your body. If you bring it from earth though, you could bring something highly customized, like tungsten disks sewn into a suit. It might look something like this when x-rayed:
Scale mail
But if you're going to take the time and expense to bring something fancy from earth, it might be more fun to make something flashy like this:
Radiation shielding
The added advantage of using scale mail is that there might be a little radiation protection that goes along with the exercise benefits. This will depend on thickness and density of material used but it's certainly going to be better than nothing. For this application it's actually better to be looking for a heavier material, not having a light weight requirement makes it easier to select something that will block radiation. Scale mail in particular seems a good choice, compared to other weight suit options, because the plates overlap in a way that minimizes gaps and might provide better full body coverage and protection from radiation.I think scale mail will be the go to, over other armor, like chain mail, or other plate mail, because it overlaps in a way that might be better protection against radiation and it looks a little cooler than other types of armor. I'm also curious about colors, will fashion motivate lots of colors and styles? Or will practicality dictate they all end up being black, something to do with an attempt at heat generation or something. I can't wait to find out.
Legacy
Another interesting consideration is that if you ever leave Mars, it's likely you'll leave your armor there. So if you're a future traveler to Mars you might get to purchase, or simply be given, the armor of a previous traveler, maybe even the first person to set foot on Mars. Imagine arriving on Mars, decades after the first explorers and being handed the equivalent of Neil Armstrong's daily outfit to wear. What an incredible added thrill.Summary
Traveling to and living on Mars will involve long periods of zero and reduced gravity. If you don't take steps to mitigate the impact you'll have detrimental health effects. Nasa has space exercise figured out but on Mars I propose that wearing a weight suit will be a better option than spending all the prescious time that would be required to exercise. The suit will need to be evenly distributed so that there's adequate weight placed on each part of the wearers body to provide an effective amount of resistance for maintaining heart health, muscle mass, and bone density. When considering the additional potential benefit of some radiation shielding, I think scale mail looks like a potentially great option. Theoretically these Martian suits of armor might be passed down from one resident to the next as people arrive to and depart from Mars.I’m Jony Mars, thank you for your time.
https://marsjon.com
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