We all know the pictures of the astronauts on the ISS floating around. We also suspect that a lack of gravity is bad for the body as the muscles go weak and such.
Why don’t spaceships just rotate to cause the effect of artificial gravity through centrifugal forces?
Small ships would have to rotate really fast to make 1G, and it’s not worth the trouble if nobody lives there permanently.
interestingly bigger ships would have to rotate faster than small ships to achieve 1g btw
this is due to smaller ships having a larger curvature so less velocity is needed
edit: no wait i just did the maths again and you’re right. smaller ships need lower absolute velocity of the outside walls, but angular velocity is higher.
Yes, but the smaller the ship, the worse the Coriolis force will be. Imagine a 10m corridor with opposing gravity on each end, and no gravity in the middle. Travelling across would be extremely disorienting.
i think that would be so much fun!
Key goals for both moon and mars missions is finding out how much gravity we need. We know we’re much healthier at 1G than in microgravity, but where is good enough? You can’t really draw a straight line to predict it. Does the moon have enough gravity for people to stay healthy long term? Does mars? Where should we set the rotation of a space station with artificial gravity?