Scott Manley's Video: Pulsed Rocket Drives

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Scott Manley's video discusses various futuristic pulsed rocket engine concepts, prompting a conversation about their implications for crew ergonomics in space travel. Participants express curiosity about science fiction narratives that explore the challenges of living in environments with alternating zero-G and 1-G acceleration. The complexities of dealing with orthogonal forces in a rotating spacecraft are highlighted, suggesting a need for better visualization of such scenarios. A Wikipedia page listing stories featuring nuclear pulse propulsion is shared, although it's noted that many do not address the specific acceleration dynamics discussed. The conversation concludes with references to specific science fiction works that may provide insights into these concepts.
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Scott Manley makes some excellent videos. This is a thought provoking one about several futuristic rocket engine concepts.



Note in the video that many of the drives are pulsed. I'm wondering if there are any SF stories incorporating those ideas. I'm thinking of the ergonomics for the crew with zero-G almost all the time punctuated by say 1-G acceleration for 0.25 seconds repeating once every 3 seconds.

That is a living environment that sounds hard to visualize. In the case where rotation provides continuous artificial gravity, there would not be zero-G most of the time. However, the acceleration pulses would be orthogonal to the rotation G, and that sounds very hard to deal with.
 
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anorlunda said:
That is a living environment that sounds hard to visualize. In the case where rotation provides continuous artificial gravity, there would not be zero-G most of the time. However, the acceleration pulses would be orthogonal to the rotation G, and that sounds very hard to deal with.
In a daily life in a running train, we are under gravity from the Earth in vertical direction and get shocks by the sudden starts and stops in horizontal direction. We would observe the similar effects in your case.
 
Melbourne Guy said:
Not sure that all of these incorporate the same ideas, @anorlunda, but Wikipedia lists a lot of stories with pulsed drives of some sort:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stories_featuring_nuclear_pulse_propulsion

I've read some of them, and none of them that I can recall describe or account for the acceleration you note.
Wow, thanks. I had no knowledge of that wiki page or of the many stories mentioned. I guess my question is well answered. I'll have to read some of them. I just loaded Steven Baxter's Ark into my Kindle.
 
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