I'm planning a book where characters spend large amounts

Well, the body will see various tolls over time, but I think I would be being conservative in saying that after 6 months of such, they would probably have at least 50% bone and muscle loss from atrophy, they would be losing their vision/going blind, losing their hearing/going deaf, and there's a good chance they would be dealing with kidney stones and very regular feelings of nausea.

If they didn't work out for that time, they would probably lose their ability to walk, and have various respiratory issues within those 6 months. Basically speaking, the situation you are imagining would basically be torture for every member of the group.

>>8482622
Would these changes eventually cause death, or just make life painful? I think I may have to make the visits to the space stations more frequent if pilots will be losing their senses though.

>>8483370
No, they would absolutely die in a very short time. Humans are not built for space. I would suggest reformulating the context if you wanted to be realistic.

>>8483375
The premise was that pilots would only be given the bare necessities to survive in their crafts. All they need to be able to do is remain conscious, alert, and have slight movement capabilities for operating controls. Making a ship large enough to have artificial gravity or other amenities would be too expensive, and giving pilots any more than the minimal amount of rest needed to operate the ships in these conditions would be inefficient. Some possible solutions might be supplying them with medicine, slightly enlarging the cockpit to have enough room for an exercise machine, or letting pilots rest longer in an area with gravity. Just need to decide which would be the most realistic and inexpensive.

>>8483951

How is the ship moving? If it has a rocket of some kind, then it has "gravity". Accelerating continuously at 1g would put you at a sizeable fraction of lightspeed inside a single year, if fuel is an issue then boosting at 1/2g or even 1/3g would also prevent zero-g sickness.

>>8481837
Just ignore it if it doesn't fits your story.
Besides that, what the hell would they be doing in a tiny capsule for months at a time? Just put them in hibernation if they do nothing.

>>8484004
They are more like fighter ships, so there would also be more erratic movements and changes in acceleration. Though I guess this does mean that some portion of time will be spent traveling at a constant direction and rate of acceleration when not in combat, which could make it easier since they may only have to deal with zero-g during combat.

>>8484013
The ships are designed to be completely automated, with just enough space to hold a single pilot inside in case manual control is needed.

>>8484051

Just put a gyroscope in and spin the pilot's cabin while he's active.

>>8481837
Astronauts lose about 1% bone mass every month in zero g and about 20% of their muscle mass in 5-11 days

Hard to say exactly how long this would take to be fatal or how well the patterns hold over long periods of time

Your best bet would be to have the pilots be genetically engineered or otherwise enhanced to withstand the effects. Even if zero g doesnt kill them it would make them extremely fragile within a few months

>>8483375
Why would they die? Wouldn't their bodies atrophy to equilibrium and then stop? NASA has done a number of experiments on bone and muscle loss and no one has died because of it.

>>8484147

A Russian cosmonaut spent over a year in low g and was a physical wreck afterwards. If these pilots are expected to exert themselves in stressful situations, you don't want them to be physically feeble with shrunken hearts. Either use cyborgs instead, or build a rotating section like in 2001 for the pilots to keep fit in.