After returning from orbit, astronauts sometimes release objects as if they will float; their brains have not forgotten gravity, but their movements need time to predict it again

After returning from orbit, astronauts sometimes release objects as if they will float; their brains have not forgotten gravity, but their movements need time to predict it again

After days or months in orbit, an astronaut can return to Earth and momentarily release an object as though it will remain beside them. Instead, it falls. NASA’s history of Skylab says returning crew members sometimes tried to let things float as they had in microgravity. The behaviour is real enough to be memorable, but the popular explanation that the brain has “deleted” gravity is not. We are writers, not clinicians. What follows is a reading…