Why gravity helps people work faster (was Why low-g and low-pressuabad...) Forum: Spacesettlers
Thread: Why gravity helps people work faster (was Why low-g and low-pressuabad...)
I dont know hitman, seems counterintuitive, though well stated. Seems to me, that the way to keep your forklift from tipping over (from someone w/ experience in forklift tipping) is NOT to increase your height by six times, but rather to increase your wheelbase, or your stance, so to speak. Wider = more stable. And, while you have a point that your acceleration needs to be slower at 1/6 g, the result of ignoring your acceleration IS NOT Tipping, but rather, flight, as your gravity is more easily overcome by acceleration and your escape velocity is much lower. So, if you go running your forklift (with a wide wheelbase) at the same rate of speed youre accustomed to on Earth, you just might wind up launching yourself.
Now Ill be the first to admit that Im not the mathematician of the group, but the above premises seem to align with what has been commonly held to be true. It seems to meet the test of intuitive common sense. But, if Im wrong, other than in scale, then I have a faulty understanding of very basic spatial mechanics that I have understood to be true since the 60s.
From: hitssquad
Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 7:37 PM
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [spacesettlers] Why gravity helps people work faster (was Why low-g and low-pressure are bad...)
> > > In 1/3rd gravity, work and transportation are limited to 1/3rd normal speed.
> Why would work and transportation be reduced by 1/3 in 1/3rd G?
No: *to* 1/3rd. Here are the answers I gave four years ago regarding working in the 1/6th g of the moon:
Forklifts tip over 6 times as easily on the moon (was Gravity allows traction)
Posted By:
hitssquad
Fri Aug 7, 2009 9:51 pm |
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--- In ssi_list 8396, Mitchell James wrote:
> I don't see higher gravity being particularly important. Your assuming an open unconstrained work area. I would expect industrial operations will be done in a closed physical reaction space.
For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. That means that foundation piles (for buildings such as your proposed closed physical reaction spaces) might have to be driven six times as deep as they would on Earth. Warehouse forklifts might operate at 1/6th the speed. Mining machinery might operate at 1/6th the speed. Telepresence waldos might operate at 1/6th the speed. Any humans on the moon might do physical work at 1/6th the speed -- as shown in the Apollo videos.
Locking the machinery together, in order to avoid the low-gravity problem, means extra expense. Solving the special engineering problems fo the moon means extra expense.
> Material handling equipment in low or zero gravity doesn't need has much power so my ton of steel would not be a problem.
The equipment moving the material can only accelerate (speed up,slow down, corner) 1/6th as fast. We know that using stickier tires would not help, because we know that forklifts are already tipping over in warehouses:
http://images.google.com/images?q=forklift+accident
http://images.google.com/images?q=forklift+fatality
Will lunar forklifts be 6x the size? (was Saving energy is silly)
Posted By:
hitssquad
Mon Aug 10, 2009 10:35 pm |
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--- In ssi_list 8400, hitssquad wrote:
> The equipment moving the material can only accelerate (speed up,slow down,
corner) 1/6th as fast.
--- In ssi_list 8416, GARY ANSORGE wrote:
> Oh Yeah, and that silliness about fork lifts being prone to tipping over,,, A fork lift is exactly as likely to tip over on earth while lifting a 1000 kg mass as that same forklift on the moon lifting the same mass(1000 Kg).
I didn't say "lift". I said "accelerate":
"The equipment moving the material can only accelerate (speed up,slow down, corner) 1/6th as fast."
At any one given rate of horizontal acceleration, a forklift on the moon is 6 times as likely to tip over as it would be on Earth. That is why forklifts on the moon would be limited to 1/6th the horizontal acceleration they would be capable of on Earth.
This concept is easily demonstratable by comparing the collapses of large buildings to those of small buildings.
Large objects of any kind experience more gravitational acceleration, relative to their height, than do small objects, ceteris peribus. Thus, large collapsing buildings serve as good proxies for what happens to all dynamic objects in high-gravity environments. We can observe that the WTC buildings were widely noted for the fact that they collapsed into their own footprints -- e.g. they basically fell straight down, instead of tipping over and landing outside of their own footprints as smaller buildings tend to do. (As with collapsing building, so with forklifts in motion. The higher gravity of Earth keeps terran forklifts planted while in motion, and the lower gravity of the moon *allows* lunar forklifts to tip over while in motion.)
This leads us to one possible solution to the low-gravity-forces-slow-work problem of moon-based industry. We might scale up all moon-based equipment to 6x the size (meaning 6x in each of all dimensions) of comparable Earth based equipment. Therefore, instead of being ~3 meters high, as on Earth, a typical moon-based forklift might be ~18 meters high, and therefore capable in theory of overcoming the low-gravity handicap.
This also implies that lunar blue-collar work would be better suited to taller people.
http://images.google.com/images?q=dutch+tall