Seems to me that it would havebeen anyone's wild guess that muscles need gravity to work againstto remain strong. Why didn'tplanning fora rotating modulego into the ISS? To expand upon the idea that external tanks couldhave beenstockpiled on orbit forretro-fittinginto pressurized work labs, twotanksjoinedat thenose could be spun together for different gravities on different floors with, say,1-G at the bottom floors. Four such tanks joined at the nose with flat solar panels along their backs could resemble a giant ceiling fan, but I digress. I ratherenjoy my ceiling fan here in FL. SSI is founded by the man who knew by numbers and intuition that spheres, toruses, and cylinders that rotate are thebest places for an expanding technological civilization, not the wrong gravities of other planets and certainly not zero-gee environments.
> Seems to me that it would have been anyone's wild guess that muscles
> need gravity to work against to remain strong. Why didn't planning for a
> rotating module go into the ISS?
time, and a rotating module would have caused vibrations that interfered
with the microgravity experiments they want to do.
Not saying these are GOOD reasons, but those are the reasons anyway.
> To expand upon the idea that external tanks could have been stockpiled
> on orbit for retro-fitting into pressurized work labs,
> two tanks joined at the nose could be spun together for different
> gravities on different floors with, say, 1-G at the bottom floors.
True, but that's another great idea that NASA had zero interest in pursuing.
We're going to have to wait for the commercial sector to start getting
involved in orbit to see that kind of innovation. SpaceX finally had a
completely successful launch just last week. Bigelow should be opening
their space stations soon. Stuff is happening.
> SSI is founded by the man who knew by numbers and intuition that
> spheres, toruses, and cylinders that rotate are the best places for an
> expanding technological civilization, not the wrong gravities of other
> planets and certainly not zero-gee environments.
To be fair, even in a High Frontier world, there will still be zero-G
space stations and construction shacks. People just won't be living in
them for extended periods of time.
Best,
- Joe
As far as construction shacks are concerned, it would be fairly easy to connect two Biglow modules together via a cable 867 meters long, spin the entire assembly at two rpm and produce one G in each module. Of course, we would then require an umbilical connecting both modules, in order to provide docking at the non-rotating center for off loading supplies to the modules,etc. Two to three rpm has been shown to be the upper limit to rotational velocity that would not induce inner ear disturbances.