mounstable rants concerning Instability of long cylinders

> At 400 mph rotation with 1 G, I would be more concerned about human
> balance conditions with the inner ear. Some sort of disorientation is
> likely with that spinning.

Nope. Disorientation results from the Coriolis effect, which relates
to the rotations per minute, not the linear velocity. Anything under 2
RPM is fine; this is WAY under that. (And from what I've read, I
believe you could go as high as 3 RPM without upsetting most people.)

This is why the classic designs are so big -- they have to be big, in
order to get the spin rate down to a level considered acceptable. This
design is even bigger than that. I bet you wouldn't even notice the
Coriolis effect on this thing if you were playing baseball.

> Tidal effects would need to be dampened, or constructively used in a
> stability system.

True. 3 miles long and 4 miles across... that's a real beast!

But wait a second here... we don't need to divide this and split it
into three 1-mile-long sections or any of that, at least not for the
sake of stability. Or at least, we just barely do. If we shorten it a
bit to 2.6 miles long, and keep the radius at 2 miles, then we can make
it one solid piece, just spin the whole dang thing, and dispense with
the bearings and moving sidewalks and whatnot. (And removing 160
moving sidewalks will make up for some of the lost space.) It'd be
like a giant version of Kalpana One.

Cheers,
- Joe

Joe Strout -- joe@...
Strout Custom Solutions