centrifuge

Kidchameleon

Hi All,

A question for yall to ponder...

Would a "centrifuge" system, like that seen in 2001: A Space Odessy, used to simulate gravity during space flight, actually work? Would such a method be possible to develop?

Regards.

Captain Chaos

It was tried in the Apollo missions to the moon I think.

Theoretically, yes, it would work. But, practically―with our current technological level of advancement―I'd imagine it would be a nightmare to try to develop.

jumpguy

Sorry to sort of hijack your thread, but wasn't a module with something to do with artificial gravity proposed for the ISS? The idea is now scrapped. I remember reading it somewhere. Anyone know more on this?

AtomicHorror

It'd work so long as you could build a ring with a large enough radius that the difference in "gravity" between you feet and your head would not be enough to unbalance you or make you dizzy whilst still providing enough gees to be useful. I've also heard that if the revolutions per minute are too high, it also becomes perceptible to humans and brings on nausea etc. You're realistically looking at a radius of at least 50 meters with a spin of about 2 rpm. That'll generate pretty low gees though. Make the radius about 100m (I think) and you get 0.3g. It might be possible to build such a station using the sorts of modules we used for the ISS joined into a ring shape, though I'd imagine the structure would need some sort of backbone truss to reduce the stress on the joints between the modules. The station would also have to expend fuel to maintain the spin.


So basically do-able but tricky and rather expensive to boot. I'd love to see it done though. Or you could just have a few modules and a counterweight joined by a tether and spin the around the center of gravity. Less structure.

AtomicHorror

jumpguy wrote: »

Sorry to sort of hijack your thread, but wasn't a module with something to do with artificial gravity proposed for the ISS? The idea is now scrapped. I remember reading it somewhere. Anyone know more on this?

Yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module

jumpguy

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module

Thanks! What a shame it was never launched.

I just did a rough (emphasis on rough, certain figures were rounded off) calculation, and I came up with a simple relationship if anybody is interested.

Any two figures which satisfy this equation, [latex]\displaystyle\mbox{R} = \mbox{.25}\mbox{T^2}[/latex], will produce ~1G, i.e. an acceleartion of approximately 9.8m/s/s. R is the radius and T is the period, i.e. the time for one revolution.

For example, if the radius was 50m, that would mean it would have to complete one revolution in ~14 seconds to provide 1G.

AtomicHorror

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

I just did a rough (emphasis on rough, certain figures were rounded off) calculation, and I came up with a simple relationship if anybody is interested.

Any two figures which satisfy this equation, [latex]\displaystyle\mbox{R} = \mbox{.25}\mbox{T^2}[/latex], will produce ~1G, i.e. an acceleartion of approximately 9.8m/s/s. R is the radius and T is the period, i.e. the time for one revolution.

For example, if the radius was 50m, that would mean it would have to complete one revolution in ~14 seconds to provide 1G.

Yeah, I think 4-5 rpm might be a touch high. You don't really need 1g though, so I'm sure 1-2 rpm would work just fine. Just need enough gravity to make working easier, keep bone density up and maintain a decent immune system.