Quote:
Originally Posted by AEAJR
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.
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Gidday Ed,
I agree they need to be standing on the spinning hull to experience the acceleration. The air will spin with the hull and won't exert much force.
Those spinning rides at the sideshow that pin people to the walls don't need magnetic boots. Neither does a stunt motorbike rider doing loop the loops or other similar stunts.
If the occupants are in contact with the hull when it starts rotating, they'll keep moving. Their bodies want to travel in a tangential vector but the curved circular hull of the ship stops you doing that by continually changing your direction. That's the acceleration you feel pushing against your feet coming from that continual change in direction when you want to travel at a tangent. And yes, if the astronauts can kick off hard enough to cancel the hull rotation, they can float weightless in the middle of the ship.
Even in the case of a small ship of say 10m diameter, the hull circumferential velocity for 1g is 25km/hr. At 40m diameter the hull speed is 50km/hr. You are not going to negate that with a little jump nor is the wind going to blow you off the floor just as it doesn't in a high speed train where your feet are experiencing 1g of acceleration.
Kind regards
Joe