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NAPLES — As I get older and creakier, I look forward to leaving this world — and spending the rest of my years in space.

Living off-Earth in a low-gravity environment might be very beneficial, and could help to extend one’s life span. Not only that, but living in low gravity could allow a person who’s weak and feeble on Earth to be active and vigorous.

We take Earth’s gravity for granted. After all, we’ve lived in a one-G environment all our lives. Except for when we’re buoyant in a swimming pool or a natural body of water, we are constantly being dragged down by gravity.

Gravity makes our bodies sag and wears away at us all our lives. Astronauts who’ve been in zero gravity report that it’s exhilarating to float weightlessly.

After they get over the upchucks, that is. During their first few hours (or days, in come cases) in zero G, most people suffer from space sickness. NASA calls it “space adaptation syndrome.”

It’s not like seasickness. What’s happening when you first go into zero G is that your body begins to adapt to its new weightless condition. The fluids in your body begin to shift around because they’re no longer pulled down by gravity. Your waist and legs become slimmer. Your face gets puffy. If you move your head you get a nauseous feeling, something like the symptoms of the flu.

The balancing mechanisms in your ears are screaming to your brain that you’re falling. But your eyes are telling you that you’re just floating. People sometimes vomit; even experienced astronauts have gone through the heaves.

But after a while your body adjusts and you feel fine. Euphoric. You actually grow a couple of inches taller! That’s because your spine unbends, since it’s no longer being pulled down into an S-shape by gravity.

Taller, slimmer, able to float like a feather. Sounds like fun.

However, while in zero G your muscles tend to lose some of their tone, because they’re not working as hard as they had to on Earth. This includes your heart muscle. Your bones reduce the amount of calcium they normally produce, because they, too, are no longer under the stress of Earth’s gravity.

This means that when you return to Earth, you could be too weak to stand on your own legs. Russian cosmonauts who’ve served in space stations for many months had to spend weeks readjusting to Earth’s gravity.

But what if you don’t intend to return to Earth? What if you retire to a space habitat in orbit around the Earth? Will your bones get dangerously brittle from lack of calcium? Perhaps zero gravity isn’t what you want, but rather a feeling of gravity that’s low enough to make you feel good, while still high enough to help keep muscle tone and good calcium production.

An orbital retirement home could be made to spin enough to produce a feeling of some gravity inside the habitat: not Earth’s full one G, but some lower amount, perhaps similar to the one-sixth G of the Moon.

Long-term exposure to radiation could be another health problem, so an orbital retirement home would need to be shielded.

An orbital habitat needn’t be a retirement center, though. Space offers some interesting advantages for manufacturing metal alloys, pharmaceuticals, electronics components and other products. For example, in zero-gravity it’s much easier to mix liquids.

Think of mixing a salad dressing. On Earth, no matter how hard you stir, the heavier elements sink to the bottom of the bowl. In zero G there are no heavier elements: they’re all weightless. And you don’t even need a bowl! Liquids form spherical shapes, whether they’re droplets of water or industrial-sized balls of molten metals.

Metallurgists have predicted that it should be possible in orbit to produce steel alloys that are much stronger, yet much lighter, than any alloys produced on Earth. This is because the molten elements can mix much more thoroughly, and gaseous impurities in the mix can percolate out and into space.

Imagine automobiles built of orbital steel. They’d be much stronger than ordinary cars, yet lighter and more fuel-efficient. There’s a market to aim for.

Moreover, in space you get energy practically for free. Sunlight can be focused with mirrors to produce furnace-hot temperatures. Or electricity, from solarvoltaic cells. Without spending a penny for fuel.

The clean, “containerless” environment of orbital space could allow production of ultrapure pharmaceuticals and electronics components, among other things.

Orbital facilities, then, would probably consist of zero-G sections where manufacturing work is done, and low-G areas where people live.

There would also be a good deal of scientific research done in orbital facilities. For one thing, an orbiting habitat would be an ideal place to conduct long-term studies of how the human body reacts to prolonged living in low gravity. Industrial researchers will seek new ways to utilize the low gravity, clean environment and free energy to produce new products, preferably products that cannot be manufactured on Earth, with its heavy gravity, germ-laden environment and high energy costs.

Some of the researchers will be psychologists studying how humans react emotionally to this new environment.

Individuals will probably do their own researches into the effects of low gravity on humankind’s oldest sport. None of the astronauts or cosmonauts who have been in space have admitted to having sex in zero G, but once a fair-sized number of people begin living in orbit permanently, they are going to experiment with zero G sex.

Floating weightlessly will present some problems, but if NASA can get two spacecraft mated successfully in orbit, a pair of loving humans with opposable thumbs and healthy libidos should be able to take advantage of this new frontier.

If you like water beds, I’m sure you’re going to love zero gravity.

Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of nearly 120 books, including “The Sam Gunn Omnibus,” a collection of stories about a space entrepreneur who builds the first zero-gravity honeymoon hotel. Bova’s Web site address is www.benbova.com.