....researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have conducted the first human experiments using a device intended to counteract this effect — a NASA centrifuge that spins a test subject with his or her feet outward 30 times a minute, creating an effect similar to standing against a force two and half times that of gravity. Working with volunteers kept in bed for three weeks to simulate zero-gravity conditions, they found that just one hour a day on the centrifuge was sufficient to restore muscle synthesis.One of the interesting things about long term colonies on the Moon or Mars would be whether the people (or especially, a baby conceived in low gravity) would weaken sufficiently so as to find it impossible to return to Earth.
Maybe just low gravity is enough to provide sufficient muscle tone, but no one will know until we can go there. I imagine mouse or rat breeding on the Moon would be a very interesting experiment.
There was a made-for-TV movie I half watched a few years ago about a Helium 3 mining colony on the moon. In it, a woman fell pregnant, but was spending some time each day in a centrifuge type device to make sure the foetus was used to higher gravity. (I think she was returning to earth to actually give birth.)
It may turn out to have been quite accurate.
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