Quote:
Originally Posted by OzEclipse
Ed is correct. Simulated gravity is relatively simple and achieved by spinning the ship as he suggests. There is no current technology and going out on a small limb here I'd suggest nor is there likely to be any future technology to generate artificial gravity. The only way to generate gravity is with mass, exactly what you don't want in a spacecraft. You have to have enough fuel accelerate it then decelerate it at your destination and to generate 1g, you need a lot of mass. Around about the mass of the Earth.
To generate simulated gravity the ship needs to rotate, the spin speed required is related to the radius. The passengers in contact with the inside of the spinning portion of the ship would experience a force exerted on their feet by the centripetal acceleration that would feel like gravity. Once in motion, they would not need magnetic boots. However this force would be zero for an astronaut positioned on the rotational axis of the ship. To generate 9.8m/s/s, the same gravity as Earth, a 40 m diameter ship would need to spin at about 6.7 RPM. This in turn may cause motion sickness to the passengers. However it becomes much more practical as the diameter increases. A 400m diameter ship if it were possible to build one that big, only needs to rotate at 2 rpm. See the attached table for examples of other diameters.
Joe
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Explain to me how the passengers would remain at the speed of the rotating ship without some kind of attaching force?
They would have to undergo continuous acceleration to sense the gravity so there would have to be a continuous force on them. I submit that that force would have to come from the hull of the rotating ship. And centripidal force does not direct you outward from the core the way gravity does, it provides a tangential acceloration so there is nothing inherently attaching you to the moving hull.
The air in the ship, not attached to the hull, would not move at the same speed as the rotating hull. This would create a resistance on the occupants slowing them from the speed of the rotating hull.
For that rotating ship to exert a force on them they would have to be in contact with it either physically or by some sort of attaching force. Thus I suggested magnetic shoes/boots. They wouldn't have to be very strong, just enough to hold contact so as to overcome the resistance imparted by the air and to compensate for the tangential nature of the force of the hull.