Full G on the Moon or other small bodies?

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Xenophile

> Would the big, ungainly maglev bearing really be any more big and
> ungainly than the radiation shield that Stanford torus needs anyway?
> An orbital ST rotates inside the shield, and this Moon thing rotates
> inside its bearing. Same difference?

Structurally, there would be similarities, but the big difference would
be the magnitude of the forces involved.

The Stanford Torus had an estimated mass of 10 million tons, about 9
million tons of which was the shielding. So if we just consider the
structural mass, and divide by six, we're talking about 167 thousand
tons of force on the bearings.

In orbit, the force on the bearings would be very nearly zero. Gravity
tides would be very small this far away from Earth. There would be even
tinier perturbations from the gravity of the sun. Outside of some large
passenger ship colliding with the slag shield on approach, I wouldn't
see the bearings coming under any significant load at all.

Regards,

Mike Combs