Crud. I understood every word you wrote, still can’t get my head around it. Whether in the plane or the space station, there’s still no “down” to orient to.
Yeah, there’s no “down” to orient to, but big brained humans can train themselves to use the cat’s trick to orient themselves to any direction.
In cats it’s mostly a reflex, which is way faster when the problem you want to solve is “I fell from this tree branch and I have .1s til I hit the ground, hopefully with my paws”, but less adaptable to “this free fall will never end and there is no ground, so while I thank my inner ear for the information that I am in free fall there is no need to panic about it. However I do want to manoever my body to look this way rather than that, so I can (I don’t know if the following example is an actual concern or not, but I imagine the trick would be useful there if it is) reach for the tether that just accidentally disconnected from the back of my suit, and stop myself drifting away from the space station and into the infinite blackness”.
Or, you know, maybe less dramatically “I have nothing in reach in front of me that I can use to move my body around, but there’s a handle behind me that I could reach if I manage to switch orientations.”
Crud. I understood every word you wrote, still can’t get my head around it. Whether in the plane or the space station, there’s still no “down” to orient to.
Yeah, there’s no “down” to orient to, but big brained humans can train themselves to use the cat’s trick to orient themselves to any direction.
In cats it’s mostly a reflex, which is way faster when the problem you want to solve is “I fell from this tree branch and I have .1s til I hit the ground, hopefully with my paws”, but less adaptable to “this free fall will never end and there is no ground, so while I thank my inner ear for the information that I am in free fall there is no need to panic about it. However I do want to manoever my body to look this way rather than that, so I can (I don’t know if the following example is an actual concern or not, but I imagine the trick would be useful there if it is) reach for the tether that just accidentally disconnected from the back of my suit, and stop myself drifting away from the space station and into the infinite blackness”.
Or, you know, maybe less dramatically “I have nothing in reach in front of me that I can use to move my body around, but there’s a handle behind me that I could reach if I manage to switch orientations.”