10-16-2015, 06:09 AM
(08-10-2015, 09:40 PM)JoeStrout Wrote: Interesting essay on the need for artificial gravity research over at The Space Review.
I couldn't agree more. After all these decades, we really should have some idea how much artificial gravity is needed for human health, and what our real rotation tolerances are.
Anybody who plays High Frontier knows that these factors greatly impact how we build livable cities in space!
Hopefully at some point someone'll decide to try lofting a couple of Bigelow Aerospace Beam330's connected by tethers and try spinning them, and use them to get some decent data on the effects of artificial low-g environments. It's what I'd do if I had a few billion in the bank, anyway!
I'm skeptical of whether greater-than-fractional rpms will prove to be acceptable. For small radii, you have to be mindful of the difference in apparent g between head and feet, which, if too high, could produce extremely unpleasant and possibly fatal effects, never mind coriolis effects causing problems. And as the radius increases, the necessary spin rate to provide any given value for g decreases, of course.
So, if I had the money, I'd equip a couple of Beam330's with propulsion units so that each could serve as a spaceship and adjust its orbit, rendevous them, then run some massively over-engineered tethers between them, and use the manouvering units to put them into a very slow spin. Maybe start at 0.001g, see what difference that makes over living in 0g, then 0.01g, then 0.1g and then slowly ratchet up to as high as was deemed sensibly safe or when bad effects started showing up, whichever came first.