11-01-2015, 12:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-08-2015, 11:02 AM by TWHall.
Edit Reason: minor grammar fix
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(10-18-2015, 02:03 PM)JoeStrout Wrote: @antred, I'm not too worried about that... that's one activity that humans are very good at (and often quite creative).
@Esme, you have a point: all the rotating-room research so far has been done on Earth, where you have a 1G field at an angle to whatever pseudogravity you're adding on top. So it's hard to be sure how those results will generalize to the real situation where you're spinning in microgravity. But the results are encouraging, anyway!
Much of the work on rotation tolerance has been done on upright subjects in rotating rooms, with the spine perpendicular to the centripetal force. That does confound the application of the findings to orbital environments detached from Earth. We absolutely do need to follow up with more and larger space-based experiments.
However, back in the 1960s, NASA Langley Research Center had a rotating space station simulator with an elaborate suspended harness system to support the subject in the appropriate orientation -- spine parallel to the centripetal force. It was 40 feet in diameter and could rotate up to 10.5 rpm. Unfortunately, it was dismantled following the NASA agency-wide reduction in force of 1971.
A nice historic video is on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EHwT33YCAw
(10-30-2015, 01:27 PM)Esme Wrote: I take your points gentlemen, but I'd also add that it hasn't yet been demonstrated that a full 1G is necessary for good health and comfortable living. I speak only for myself, of course, but I wouldn't be inclined to regard an environment that induces motion sickness as being a pleasant place to visit, let alone live in - and I'd also add that I am one that avoided all fairground rides (aside from bumping cars/dodgems) after discovering that even the mildest of such tend to make me violenty ill causing effects that lasted for hours afterwards. So yes, there is bias behind my skepticism, but that said, I believe data - it's a shame we haven't yet got more of it on this subject. Here's hoping we don't have to wait too many more years before some is obtained!
The problem is that it hasn't yet been demonstrated that a full 1g is not necessary for good health. We don't know whether the physiological benefits of gravity scale linearly with dose (intensity integrated over time), or whether there's a threshold. Until we have more data on that, 1g is the safe bet.
About half of all astronauts and cosmonauts endure 1 to 3 days of "space adaptation syndrome" before they're comfortable in microgravity. I don't know whether the space tourism companies communicate that to their prospective "guests." The pop media never mention it. Interestingly, susceptibility to motion sickness on Earth or in aerodynamic flight doesn't seem to correlate with susceptibility to space sickness; it's not a predictor, one way or the other.
When we talk about settlements, we should also consider that even here on Earth pre-industrial cultures have flourished for centuries in conditions that outsiders find difficult to adapt to -- for example: high altitudes in the Himalayas and Andes; cold in the high Arctic; heat and dryness in deserts.
I think we have to let go of the image of space settlements as Utopian perfections of American suburbia. Space is a frontier that will be settled by frontier people. Free-space rotating settlements will comprise living situations unlike anything ever encountered before, and the settlers must and will adapt. Attentive, proactive design can (hopefully) assist that. Ultimately these settlements must be designed by people who have been there.
Apologies for the rambling tangent ...