Hypothetical Question. Creating Gravity and power supplies

[scifigeek]

Hi guys

just wondering if their were any theroys , in relation to creating gravity in space, so weightlness dose not take affect and people can walk freely, Also. Even though this is off the subject ,what did the Russian Space Station use to generate power.

any help on this would be greatly apriciated.

cheers
Scifigeek

 

[HallsofIvy]

I'm not certain what you mean. There are no theories relating to how to create gravity- that doesn't appear to be possible without adding mass to create a new planet! However, it is possible to simulate gravity, for example by building your space station like a wheel and rotating it so that the centifugal force simulates gravity. That's not done presently since there are no space stations large enough for it to be effective.

The Mir space station depended mainly upon solar panels to get power from sunlight. Here is an old reference to it:
http://home.comcast.net/~rusaerog/mir/mir_power.html

The Russian space

 

[scifigeek]

thanks , how big would a space station have to be , for the spinning theroy to simulate gravity , that sounds a lot like the theroy on babylon 5 ,with rotating axis, is it actually possible and also , would their be anyway to conduct a power source like electricity on the russian space station, besides using solar power.

 

[yogi]

You could put smaller drums within the space station - after a crew member or members enter the drum, it could be set to revolve - you would probably want to balance this by using two drums on opposite sites of the stucture to avoid a counter torque on the main frame. If you wanted to have the entire space station rotate at a velocity that produced 1g, you set the gravity force equal to the centripetal force
therefore the radius R = the velocity squared divided by g. So once you pick either R or the velocity of rotation, you can calculate the other. Or in terms of the angular velocity
g = Rw^2

 

[pervect]

There a several ways being studied to have rotating gravity.

One of the key issues is what sort of rotation rate is humanly acceptable. The physics formulas are simple

acceleration = radius * (2*pi / period)^2

The question is what minimum rotational period human beings can accept without getting motion sickness.

There are some easy theoretical solutions which have some engineering difficulties if it turns out to be necessary to have a very long period. One can divide the spacecraft into two pieces, connected by a strong "tether", and rotate both pieces around the common center of gravity.

This will give a large but lightweight structure. The engineering difficulties in splitting up a spacecraft into two parts like this are not trivial, however - but they are not related to fundamental physical issues, either.

 

[scifigeek]

thanks guys , now the oppsite is their a way to create artifical zero gravity


cheers

 

[russ_watters]

Swimming pools and the http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9903/30/downlinks/" are pretty much your only options.