Emu Gravity

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 ;-)

Darren

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?