Creating Artificial Gravity for Spacecraft Travel

[Robert_K]

I wrote a brief technical paper on the research and concepts for creating artificial gravity in space using centrifuges for my Mechanical Engineering class. I would just like to share it with the Physics world!
http://prezi.com/lzibv-m6-rg6/artificial-gravity-and-its-application-in-long-term-space-travel/
Let me know what you think of this subject!

 

[DragonPetter]

That is a very cool design and layout. You did a really good job with that. I can't comment on the content though since I don't have time to read it now.

 

[bahamagreen]

I kind of favor spinning the whole craft - constant availability of the benefit, conserved motion after initial spin up. The only thing needed special is a control system to monitor and adjust the distribution of mass as people and equipment move around... but that can be easily done by automatically pumping stored water from one tank to another (this is going to be part of house keeping plumbing anyway, so just let the program manage it to keep the spin rate constant and the axis of rotation aligned).

A centrifuge poses a torque on the craft doesn't it? Dynamic corrections to the orientation of the craft would be going on during each use of the centrifuge if the schedule is to use it intermittently winding it up and down to speed.. The spin up, spin down, and torque corrections would use a lot of power, and I'm not sure how productive people can be during the treatments.

The biggest problem is hard radiation exposure... lifetime maximum exposure is reached before finishing a one way trip to Mars... no one is going anywhere for long without a solution to that.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I see no reason why the whole craft shouldn't rotate. Whilst it would be true that the stresses may be greater if the whole mass is to be rotated but the majority of the craft mass could be located at the centre of rotation to reduce these forces. The living quarters would be the only parts that would need to be operated at 1g. An advantage would be that the rotation speed could be very low and dynamic stresses would also be low, compared with a fast rotating centrifuge. Also, the crew would be constantly under 1g instead of being stuck in a box for their daily dose of normal gravity.
There is no limit to the radius that could be used for this kind of structure.

 

[Filip Larsen]

Welcome to PF!

You may want to know, that there are proposals for "long arm" artificial gravity designs using a tether or similar, for instance [1]. You may want to search for papers on the subject on NTRS [2] and give [3] a visit, if you haven't already.

[1] http://www.artificial-gravity.com/JANNAF-2005-Sorensen.pdf (dokument 20060004158 on NTRS)
[2] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp
[3] http://www.artificial-gravity.com/

 

[mrspeedybob]

I prefer the linear acceleration approach. The energy requirements are higher but it kills 2 birds with one stone. You have nice uniform gravity during your trip, and the trip to Mars falls into the 2 - 5 day ballpark so radiation exposure is minimized as well