Colony Wall loading.

From: "victoriatangoman"
To:
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 1:30 AM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Re: Colony Wall loading.

[snikt]
> Cool trick if it works. I know that this is frequently cited in the
> work of space tethers, space elevators, but I'm not convinced that
> it would work in a habitat. Here's why: the force at work on a
> planetary body is gravity caused by the mass of the the planet. On a
> habitat, we're dealing with a pseudo-gravity effected through
> centrifugal force. I think that would be destabilizing because of
> the coriolis effect. Isn't there something to that? There really
> wouldn't be a hanging down (implied that gravity is pulling as a
> vector towards the surface) rather there would be a combination of
> vectors to consider in the engineering.
[snikt]

Coriolis effect operates only over something that is moving outward or
inward the rotation center. For instance, people in the elevators would
experience Coriolis forces when going up or down. But static structures,
like the main bulk of the building, would experience centrifugal force only,
"downward" and constant. So, you would have the advantage of working with
tensile rather than compressive structures (as Ian Wollard pointed out) and
also you would have the advantage of the decrease in "weight" as the
"height" increases (as was pointed out by yourself).

Lucio Coelho