A Tale of Burping in Space!

It is normal and engaging to read about space. You find a whole new thing you dwell deeper. Here is another space fact!

Come along, let’s take a space tour. Now picture yourself floating serenely above Earth, gazing at the magnificent curvatures of our planet, and a bubble of gas trapped in your stomach. On Earth, you’d casually burp and find peace. But in space? Not so fast.

Though being an astronaut might sound glamorous soaring through the cosmos floating weightlessly and gazing around the Earth from above, little did you know it comes with all unique challenges, from gruesome training to eating freeze-dried foods, to simple burp becomes challenging!

Normally, on Earth, gravity pulls down all the contents of the stomach. All the liquid and solids are at the bottom of the digestive system, while gases fill up the upper space and are then forced back up the esophagus as a burp. Now this doesn’t happen in space. In space, in microgravity, all these solids and liquids float together in the stomach. A former International Space Station (ISS) Commander Chris Hadfield calls it chunky bubbles affirming the Snapple cap fact.

Here is Maddie Massy, MPhil, Immunology, explaining the facts on her Instagram.

So, in space when you burp all the liquid and solids come along and it’s gross, it simply looks like You Burp, You Throw Up. And astronauts call it ‘Wet Burp’ or ‘Bomit’, a kind of acid reflux. Imagine it in a closed environment or your spacesuit. But you don’t want all the gas going out the other end either, and yet again become smelly.

So, how do you think it works?

The space dining is always a blend of science and strategy. As per experiments conducted to decide the space food, the high-flatulence food was removed from the spaceflight menu. There is an air circulation on the ISS to clear CO2 exhaled out to prevent suffocation in the closed space.

In the book, What's it Like in Space? by Ariel Waldman, Jim Newman, a NASA astronaut and Physicists shared his ‘Push and Burp’ trick i.e. pushing off a wall, he could briefly mimic gravity, and all the food remains in the stomach and also would allow the gas to pass harmlessly, sounds quirky but it worked for him says the astronaut.

It’s fascinating to think that something so mundane as burping is a luxury enabled by gravity. On Earth, the gravity keeps everything in order. But in space, it is a whole story of floating chaos.  So next time dine at a restaurant, and take a burp without the space chaos, thank the gravity.

Reference:

1. Starr, M. (2018). Here’s The Really Gross Reason Why You Don’t Want to Burp in Space. [online] ScienceAlert. Available at: https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-the-really-gross-reason-why-you-don-t-want-to-burp-in-space.

2. Andress, M. (2016). National Space Centre - The Biggest Question in Space. [online] Archive.org. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20160307030936/https://spacecentre.co.uk/space-now/158-the-biggest-question-in-space.

3. ScienceAlert (2018). Astronauts might throw up if they burp in space. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/astronauts-avoid-burping-space-because-gravity-2018.

4. Tanos, L. (2021). The Real Reason Astronauts Don’t Burp In Space. [online] Grunge. Available at: https://www.grunge.com/372252/the-real-reason-astronauts-dont-burp-in-space/,

By Josna Lewis

_MSM