10-01-2015, 12:37 AM
(09-30-2015, 02:19 PM)antred Wrote: Hmm, but how would you position such a centrifuge in an environment that already has a low but not negligible gravity component? If you make it spin around a vertical axis then people we still get pulled "down" at 0.38 G. If you make it spin around a horizontal axis, then "gravity" as felt by people living in the thing would vary from 1 G - 0.38 G = 0.62 G at the top to 1 G + 0.38 G = 1.38 G at the bottom of the centrifuge. Or have I completely misread your comment?
Picture something like disc-like building sitting on flat ground at Mars. Then envision the outer ring of the building able to rotate around the disk on a track. The floor in this outer ring as inclined to the ground, such that, when the outer ring is spun around the disk, the combined acceleration of the natural Martian gravity and the spin to equal exactly one Earth G, with the two force vectors combining to be exactly perpendicular to the floor. Thus the feeling would be exactly as if one were standing inside a building on Earth.
So there are a lot of mechanical issues to deal with in a system such as this, and maybe some problems with Coriolis effects. But if the inhabitants spend most of their time in this area, then they should not suffer the ill effects of reduced gravity.