Space Walking "Space Walk"

[Accessing]

Space walk is a colloquial name used by UNSC crewmen to refer to a temporary condition that occurs to humans that spend too much time in microgravity. It is likely that their legs become unaccustomed to holding their body weight due to muscle mass lost during extended periods of free floating caused by zero gravity. As a result, when they return to an atmosphere with stable gravity, they have a strange lope to their walk for some time. Space walk can also lead to temporary paralysis from the waist down.

[ https://www.halopedia.org/Space_walk ] 

This is something of a background to the setting of space only affecting a few characters in Halo, I looked up if this could be real in our current astronauts and nothing. No results directly refering to the same phenomenon described in Halo but to no surprise either, no one has really been in space for 20 years at a time and many do come back to earth with mild osteoporosis. 

In the microgravity environment of space, astronauts lose on average 1% to 2% of their bone mineral density every month. For a short-duration flight, bone loss is a fairly minor consequence. On a long-duration space flight, such as those planned for missions to Mars and beyond, bone loss can be a serious impediment. 

Isn't that pretty crazy? Thought this would be something interesting to talk about, if Earth and well different planets or crewmen overall that travel even in slipspace would lose bone density and thereafter becoming less effective at ground combat against the Covenant and later the Banished. 

 

 

[ADM S Osman]

Astronauts are typically in zero gravity but space travel and in the 26th century they developed artificial zero gravity. 

[ https://www.halopedia.org/Artificial_gravity ] 

Essentially Shawn if there is an artificial gravity environment it should help counteract the loss of bone density you mentioned. 

Playing through Halo Infinite right now this post reminded me that the Pelican also has some sort of centrifugal force to produce gravity or a gravity plate. But of course it might just be the weight of Master Chiefs armor or magnetic plates from his boots. 

For someone lost in space, twice now Chiefs bone density might actually be in question.