Full G on the Moon or other small bodies?

On 1/12/07, joe@... wrote:
(...)
> That seems unlikely. Remember, at the same time your gravity vector is
> pitching over, it's also getting lighter -- ending at 1/6 its normal
> value. It wouldn't be hard to build buildings to remain standing at an
> angle in only 1/6 G, and you would presumably do this because the city
> would have to be spun down occasionally for maintenance. Similarly,
> any large bodies open water would presumably be designed with someplace
> to go for spin-down.
(...)

I was imagining standard buildings, which would crumble even with a
lateral acceleration as small as 0.17g . Buildings are big compression
structures relying on a uniform gravitational field pointing
downwards.

But as you hinted, I have to agree that it is a bit silly to imagine
standard buildings inside such a lunar torus. One could add a lot of
safeguards, for instance making the buildings work as compression
structures during normal operation of the torus, while working as
suspension bridges in failure mode.

Now we just have to engineer the problem of people and furniture
falling from the windows in the "wrong" side during failures. :)