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To: unlearner

makes sense, but in a zero-g environment, if you throw an object against the rotation, it will lose the benefits of the cent force and is thrown with enough force -10m/sec to counter the 10 m/sec approximation of gravity, it will lose weight and hover as the drum turns around it.


39 posted on 11/26/2016 11:28:22 AM PST by camle (keep an open mind and someone will fill it full of something for you)
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To: camle

“if you throw an object against the rotation, it will lose the benefits of the cent force and is thrown with enough force -10m/sec to counter the 10 m/sec approximation of gravity, it will lose weight and hover as the drum turns around it.”

That’s sort of true but, practically speaking, the concept works.

Your example is similar to saying that if a space ship accelerated at a constant 1G force, a person could fall off of the edge or would get left behind if they went outside.

In the example given, a person would not just get knocked into a weightless state. Yes, they could move in an unusual trajectory, and this would have to adapted to.

For example, when Dave is running on the ship, if he were to leap into the air, he would jump either much further or a much shorter distance, depending on the direction in which he jumped.

Balance would probably be an issue also. When your legs and arms move (while running) they are going to get pulled in weird, wobbly directions. It’s sort of like when a spinning top starts to slow down and wobbles before it falls. You would swing an arm forward and you would feel it pull left. And then when you brought it back, it would veer right.

But this probably would not affect things like blood flow because these motions are so tiny. Bottom line is that spinning is a fairly decent way to create artificial gravity in space. To me it would make sense to at least have part of a space craft designed to do this. With magnetic bearings it would require very minimal amounts of energy to keep the spin at a constant speed.

Humans were designed to live in gravity, and this makes manned space travel much more feasible.


45 posted on 11/26/2016 11:59:40 AM PST by unlearner (11/8/2016 - a new beginning.)
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