There is one item in the space settlement program that makes me
reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
settlement.
Does anybody know what to do?
Hmmm, in fact people *will* be able to walk no matter they are in rotating or
counter-rotating direction. However, their "emu-weight" will change slightly
and also they will probably have to incline their bodies back or forth
slightly depending on the direction. As for people walking parallel to the
rotational axis, they wouldn't feel nothing different, AFAIR.
"artificial gravity"!
Em Qui 11 Dez 2003 02:52, babbler36 escreveu:
> There is one item in the space settlement program that makes me
> reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
> The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
> centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
> Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
> able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
> settlement.
>
> After reading the several article on it, I am very confused.
>
> Does anybody know what to do?
(...)
Wasn't there somebody in the last couple of years who did a demonstration
experiment with rats, keeping them in a cage mounted on a record player
turntable, which rotated at approximately the speed an orbital colony would?
I can remember the photos of the rats on the internet as the weeks went
on, living entirely normally. The project lasted through one entire
reproductive cycle, as I recall, demonstrating using a small video camera
inside the cage that the rats could walk entirely normally, had normal
energy and food consumption, and gave birth to healthy offspring. I
remember them pointing out that the coriolis forces on the rats were
somewhat greater, because of the small diameter of the cage compared to an
orbital colony.
If you're able to walk over a hundred miles an hour, then I'm pretty
impressed.
Mike Combs
From: babbler36 [mailto:babbler36@...]
There is one item in the space settlement program that makes me
reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
settlement.
After reading the several article on it, I am very confused.
Does anybody know what to do?
babbler36 wrote:
> reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
Wow! You're in a position to do that????? :-)
On Dec 10, 2003, at 8:52 PM, babbler36 wrote:
> reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
> The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
> centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
> Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
> able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
> settlement.
>
The effect depends on the rotation rate. The NASA studies in the 70s
found that up to about 2rpm shouldn't create any major problems. There
will be differences. Depending on which way you throw, a ball will
appear to curve one way or another. A decent local baseball team
should be able to beat the World Series champ if they play in the
colony and the guys from Earth don't have too much time to practice in
a rotating environment.
The International Space Station's (ISS) most important legacy may be
jump-starting space tourism. Consider: the first space tourist, Dennis
Tito, was supposed to go to the Soviet era Mir space station. Under
pressure from NASA, Russia de-orbited the Mir which resulted in Mr.
Tito going to the ISS instead. Now the Mir was a terrific space
station, but by the time of Tito's trip it was also old, smelly,
crowded and probably not all that nice. The ISS was brand new, shiny,
much more roomy, etc. Mr. Tito came back to Earth with glowing accounts
of how great space is. Would his experience have been as good on Mir?
Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html
Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.
If you're able to walk over a hundred miles an hour, then I'm pretty
impressed.
Mike Combs
From: babbler36 [mailto:babbler36@...]
There is one item in the space settlement program that makes me
reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
settlement.
After reading the several article on it, I am very confused.
Does anybody know what to do?
--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "babbler36"
> able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
> settlement.
Back in the days of yore, when I was still in high school, one
summer I worked on a research vessel and we were out at sea for
pretty much the whole season.
I got used to the rocking motion on the ship and I still remember
how weird everything was when we got into port and I hit land for
the first time in 5 weeks. The solid, steady ground felt so strange.
I suspect that people living in a Habitat will adapt very quickly to
the peculiarities caused by emu-gravity and Coriolis Effect and when
they make planetfall things will seem strange to them. Probably the
first thing they'll do is drop something to see it falls in a
straight line, or turn on a tap to see whether the water curves.
Going to the urinal may involve some retraining :)
TangoMan
Interesting question,
While I don't pretend to be an expert in this area I have picked up the
odd fact or two that may be relevant. The first thing that comes to mind
is that the size of the habitat and the orientation of the object being
effected is important. On . sorry, In, a large habitat, that is one
larger than a couple of kilometres in diameter, I doubt that you would
notice much of a difference from what you feel here on earth. Sure,
things are going to curve when you drop them but how much will they move
to the side when they fall just 2 metres in a habitat that is 2,000
metres in diameter? Not much. How about in a habitat that is 20,000
metres in diameter? Considerably less, in fact would you be able to
notice, without doing the maths, I don't know but I'm sure it would be
negligible. Now if we start talking about small stations, that's a whole
different matter. I have seem articles where NASA is considering a small
centrifuge to give it's astronauts a feeling of gravity to stop or slow
some or the problems that come with micro-G. I saw a discussion of one
possible problem with this related to an effect called "water hammer".
They were concerned that if a person was in this kind of device AND had
their head at the high G end, they could turn their head to the side
quickly and the sudden pressure change that came from the fluids in
their heads trying to go in one direction and the device forcing it in a
different one could burst weak blood vessels. Now I should point out
that from what I understand, all of this needs everything to be setup in
the worst way possible and is not something that should be worried about
too much, I think in the NASA diagrams I saw they had the head near the
centre. On the other hand, when designing a habitat you would have to be
careful to take this kind of effect into consideration. One example
might be high speed elevators or high speed trains, there could be some
directions they shouldn't travel in, if you want people to keep lunch
down. Of course if you have good people doing the designing you should
be okay and the bigger the habitat the less of a problem you will have.
So we should be making sure that all our habitats are at lest 20 kms
wide ;-)
Subject: [spacesettlers] Emu Gravity
There is one item in the space settlement program that makes me
reluctant to sign off on any space settlement project:
The "artificial" gravity. It not "artificial," it is "emulated," via
centripetal and centrifugal force, with a much stonger Coriolis
Effect. It would cause life to become VERY different, like not being
able to walk in agaist (or is that with?) the rotation of the
settlement.
After reading the several article on it, I am very confused.
Does anybody know what to do?
babbler36 wrote:
>
>Does anybody know what to do?
>
If you want to know more than what is already said,
there is a nice dissertation on "The Architecture of Artificial-Gravity
Environments for Long-Duration Space Habitation" by Theodore Wayne Hall
which can be found on the web. I think it is on
www0.arch.cuhk.edu.hk/%257Ehall/ag/Dissertation/FrontMatter.htm