Can The Human Body Handle Rotating Artificial Gravity?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 เม.ย. 2024
- Artificial gravity for spaceflight is a concept older than spaceflight itself, but we've only ever seen one small scale test ever flown in space. However decades of research have been performed to show that the human body can adapt to the conditions required for rotating artificial gravity. This shows that it's an engineering problem that likely solvable for interested parties who want to spend the time, effort and money creating the classic rotating space stations from Science Fiction.
Here's a couple of papers which were heavily referenced in researching this
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/1...
ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/1...
The Voyager space station video is from the Gateway Foundation
/ @thegatewayspaceport
Intro and End segments by Concodroid and Eclipso - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
![[UNCUT]”บิ๊กโจ๊ก” แฉพลีชีพ เดินหน้า ล้างบาง สตช. ฟ้องหมด มันสนพวกใคร I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FIWKnr2ArPs/mqdefault.jpg)
In _Mass Effect_ there's a warning printed along the walls of the Citadel that reads "Gravity Achieved via Rotation-- Dropped Objects Will Fall Towards the Window"
Some of the research that went into ME1 scares me, The Codex is super expansive and has a ton of real world science in it.
@@namAehT Which is one of the reasons it became my favorite game.
Somehow I totally missed that warning in ME1. I guess I am going to have to reinstall ME1 and go take a look sometime as now I wonder what else I may have overlooked. It was a great franchise, until it suddenly wasn’t, I do hope they may fix that blunder and resurrect the franchise sometime as that was one of my favorite games along with the Halo franchise.
Let's See the Hampster running around his Exercise Wheel on the ISS...
I'm Commander Shepard, and that's my favorite sign on the Citadel!
The space station was rotating fine the other week lol
Ooooh, nice dig! And it was the Russians again. There might be a problem with keeping the solar panels pointed at the sun, however.
I’m weak
They said, lets do that experiment again but this time with larger subjects.
Was just thinking this!
@@psmirage8584 mirrors
My body has slowly lost muscle and bone mass watching youtube videos.
probably with frequent Nausea?
Objects at rest, stay at rest.
I have heard a critical aspect of rotational gravity is to get the radius large enough that the gravity is essentially the same for both your feet and your head (i.e. minimal change over 2m, not sure what threshold is thought to be the maximum difference to be allowed). That makes adaptation and all tasks a lot easier.
They have tested this by having people live in rotating facilities on Earth. The difference in the rotation tends to make you sick. You're not in a constant gravity filed like on Earth. If you throw a ball it will curve into the wall. You need a large radius or you'd get nauseous.
@@charlesvan13 I believe my point was that you need a large radius.
What I find to amazing is that from early on we knew the only way to create artificial gravity was through rotation, but every space movie or show always presumes we sold how to create gravity, but like in Battlestar Galactica they have FASTER THAN LIGHT DRIVES and Gravity on their Spaceships but still use over 500 year old technology for guns and missiles and only have nuclear weapons not thermonuclear weapons and if we could go FASTER THAN LIGHT, HOW ARE WE STILL USING TECHNOLOGY FROM THE ANCIENT CHINESE.
@@staceygruver1969 Why I have trouble swallowing alien abduction claims from earlier decades. Like "Fire in the Sky". The aliens had far advanced space tavel tech, but when it came to doing experients and exams, they seemed to use techniques no better than what doctors were using in the 1950s. Why are they so smart in other areas, but total morons when it comes to biology?
Apparently with training people have gotten to 20 rpm, which is a much smaller radius than something like 2rpm. Still I would limit it to 5-10 rpm because after that the radius is too small
15:04 "I'm Scott Manley, fly safe" (headphones explode, ears bleed, and eardrums collapse)
*_I T I S A G O O D P A I N_*
"I'm Scott Manley, fly sa-" DOO DUUHH
Chuck the headphones - get some speakers, the levels sounded about right to me
As a speaker pleb, I can confirm I almost kacked me pants at the end.
@@paulstubbs7678 iT wOrKs FiNe FoR ME!
I read a book on Anti-Gravity, couldn't put it down.
I couldn't pick mine up, it was far too heavy reading for me. :}
Spare a thought for bookworms on the ISS reading about Earth gravity. The book is never found where they last left it.
I see what you did there 😆
Personally I don't see the attraction.
@@tonyhawk123 I bet their lives are ruled by Velcro. :D
I remember seeing films of the Skylab astronauts running along the inside of the space station creating "artificial gravity". They talked about starting by hooking their feet in crevices on the walls and once they got enough momentum they had gravity.
In a later Arthur Clarke, Imperial Earth, he suggested cycling on track bicycles (as in the stripped down irons used on velodromes) around the inner circumference of a section of the hull. That'd work quite well. Others have suggested it would need to be tricycles, for balance.
The author for some reason does not mention it, but it is actually the real example of artifitial rotational gravity of large scale on a space station.
Simulated gravity is what you're talking about. No such thing as "AG".
@@dh88kthere is such a thing, it's used in sci-fi. We don't have the technology/understanding to make it irl (if ever)
@@AdrianMidgley Why would you need a trike? A rotating wheel self-stabilizes, even in the presence of gravity, which is why bicycles can stay upright to begin with. Plus, in a zero-g environment you wouldn't have to worry about balance to begin with.
From what I have heard, that on a space station scale assuming the minimum diameter and rpm to produce an acceptably healthy level of gravity (many experts seem to settle on a number close to 450' diameter), the perceived level of coriolis effect would be substantially reduced and well within the range of normal human adaptability.
I feel like this video missed quite a few things. Mainly bigger objects don’t need to spin as fast.
Yes, coriolis force is an issue but not a big problem. It will not seriously harm human action, but some things would work a bit differently. Even the footage in this video shows that people act well in high-coriolis environment, only the darts flies on a curve.
1. What is the minimum artificial gravity required for health? 9.8 is too much to implement.
2. A person sleeps 8 hours a day. If you sleep in a centrifuge, you can reduce your size and prevent your bones and heart from degrading. A special compartment for sleeping can replace exercise equipment at least partially.
@@nickgennady he said that.
@@AnuclanoНо как точно попадают в другую мишень?! ))
"Unlimited source of pedantry from physicists" is a great way to describe every physics teacher ever tellling you that centrifugal force isn't real and you just stand there with an open mouth until it starts making sense after a few weeks and dozens of explanations.
Except it is real, the force MUST exist.
If the force didn't exist then Newton's third law would be incorrect and as such a fundamental cornerstone of physics would be lost and so much that we thought we knew would have to be re-evaluated.
Speaking pedantically, there's no such thing as an *unlimited* source of anything.
@@FoxDren The centrifugal force is a 'fictitious' force. All that means is that it doesn't appear in inertial frames, only rotating frames. It is not the "Equal and opposite force" to the centripetal force, unlike what Scott implied.
Reaction forces do not act on the same object as the force itself! The reaction force to the centripetal force on a ball, is the tension in the string.
In fact, there is no 'reaction' force to the centrifugal force acting on a freely floating object in a rotating frame of reference. This doesn't break Newton's laws, because they only hold in inertial frames of reference.
@@FoxDren The force you feel is your own inertia, the force you feel is actually your body wanting to continue in a straight line. There is no "real" force but there is the real centripetal force (acting towards the centre of rotation) keeping you bound to the circular trajectory.
@@donjones4719 Being pedantic myself, is it truly a faux pas to refer to an inexhaustible source of something as unlimited? While not technically the same thing if you can never use up all of a source. In practical terms it is unlimited.
"Planet size chunks of mass are great to living on but it's kind of inconvenient to carry along if you're doing a space flight". I love taht Scott! :D
Unless you are a Pierson's Puppeteer of course
The Death Star enters the chat.
@@tma2001 star killer base enters the chat
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot... James could you please take these 2 planets along. Yes I know it's kinda inconvenient to carry..."
Arrange the worlds in a Kepler Rosette, their gravitational tug upon each other keeping them in a steady position relative to each other.
Larry Niven thought of all this almost a decade before Star Wars was ever a thing.
Had seen your name (Channel) many times in my suggested videos, watched a couple over the last 2 years, then I saw this one, watched it and as soon as I reached the end, you had yourself a new subscriber!
One who will go binge watching your available content!
Really fascinating. So comprehensive and love the detail you included.
14:28 "With the new wave of space tourism..."
It's just amazing that we can start saying things like that without it being fiction
Yes, so good!
at the rate we were progressing in 1968, it was indeed possible to have advanced that much by 2001. The problem is, we stopped, and focused more on the business side of things rather than the engineering, development, science, application, and discovery
@@k1productions87 As easy as it is to bash the space shuttle program, in some ways I think it was pretty important for space travel now. While there weren't a whole lot of strides for going INTO space, many supporting technologies have had the chance to catch up, and a lot of that time was spent just doing space exploration in general. Astronomy has had a so many crazy discoveries in these last few years.
You know the first space tourist passed a week in space twenty years ago, right?
@@k1productions87 Actually the one thing tha\t killed investment in space exploration more than any other (in the US at least) was the Vietnam war :(
"So maybe the only thing [Arthur C. Clarke] got wrong is the date."
I expect this to be true of many things, given a long enough sampling period.
agreed. Clarke was a genius, and rarer still, a genius who was also a _good communicator._
Perhaps obvious, but as Clarke explained the date was never meant to be taken literally. The year 2001 was just a symbol of "some futuristic date" (and seemed very futuristic in the 1960s).
Given an infinite universe, it's even more true if you allow time and place to be wrong.
IIRC he said it was set a century too soon (maybe because we were still stuck in LEO in 2001).
@@asgerms A little short hand for the 21st century, as Clarke often pointed out, the year 2000 was the last year of the 20th century, on the simple math proof that there was never a year zero in the calendar.
Once again Mr. Scott you knocked it out of the park!
It’s always a pleasure listening to your videos.
Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday!
And keep looking up! 👍
Really brilliant and accurate. As a paraglider pilot, I have learned to fix my vision on a wing tip when performing high g "spiral " descent turns.
Have you read the excellent descriptions of artificial G combat on the Tiamat station in Larry Niven's Man-Kzin wars? A well trained human fighter who has adapted to the coriolis forces can best a Kzin.
The russians tried to carry out tests like this with the ISS the other week...
💀
“It was just a prank bro” the Russians apparently
@@adamkerman475 "We do a little trolling"
Jonas, you made me spill my beer! LOL
We like to have fun here.
10:56 That arrow throw is wild. Wow 🙂
The rotating systems that you talked about are the amusement park types where centrifugal force throws one against the side . But you are standing vertically , feet against the floor , and not the side against which your body is thrown . The artificial gravity rotating donuts that would work are the type where one walks on the circumference of the donut , and where " up " is towards the center of the donut . If the donut were big enough and spinning at the appropriate angular speed , then as one walks around the " donut " , you wouldn't notice the curvature , " down " would be at your feet , and " up " would be toward the hub , or the center of the ' donut ' . And this coriolis force only appears when walking along a ' spoke ' or on a merry go round where you are not walking around on the circumference , but rather say from the center to the outside , as the merry go round is rotating . But it will be essential to bring gravity along on some extended space mission . Humans have evolved in it , and cannot live for long periods of time without it .
I always find it hilarious when they use magnetic boots and everything else stays down, nothing ever floats. Great video.
You can’t have artificial gravity without the Blue Danube.
So you mean that Johann Strauss II invented gravity back in 1866?
:-)
@@thiesenf Only for about 11 minutes at a time.
Just like you need Metal to do cold Fusion. Woah!
playing that song right now
Nah, it's Van Halen's Dance the night away
Wow! That a Russian rotating room is amazing. 60’s sci-fi vibe. Love it.
Good to listen to, good to know people like Scott are explaining things like this, glad to see interest in space exploration growing again as I feel it was given very little attention in the UK,and great to say kids at school are really re,connecting , my daughter told me she was discussing lunar orbits in her primary school, it broadens their minds and makes everyday problems less concerning 👍
I once went to Worlds of Fun near Kansas City and rode the centrifuge ride where they drop the floor so many times in a row I nearly broke the park record of 27. Sadly I only learned that after I got off the ride because I was hungry. (Yeah, cast iron stomach here!) But the coriolis effect was a BLAST! Several people kept riding with me and we'd throw stuffed animals at each other and you could watch them arc the way the arrows do in the old Russian video. It was REALLY hard to aim for someone to catch it because you had to predict where they'd be, and seeing the outside world whizzing by in your periphery made it hard to concentrate.
2001: A Space Oddessy was the first movie I saw, as we had a "field trip" in elementary school to a majestic old theater in Chicago. An amazing film, I ate it up as a young lad, since EVERY kid at that time wanted to be an astronaut. And Arthur C. Clarke (and Stanley Kubrick) did a magnificent job with the story and cinematic presentation.
I was born in 1959. I do not remember the Mercury missions, I vaguely remember the Gemini missions & I sure remember the Apollo missions. I wanted to be an Astronaut too, until I found out that I'd have to wear a diaper again. I haven't seen 2001 since I was young. I'm thinking of buying it. It was a great movie. "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave".
In my part of the world it seemed only to be me - and my dad - that thought of being "spacemen" ("rummænd" in Danish). But of course there were many others.
Stanly Kubrick also faked the moon landings. The Earth is Flat and Motionless you idiot.
I was told once that the psychedelic effects near the end were very popular with groups using certain drugs! Definitely trippy!
Clark and Kubrick did get one thing wrong, maybe two. The definite thing they got wrong, other than the date, was the idea that certain companies, popular and going strong at the time of filming, would persist. These would be Pan-American World Air and Spaceways, and Ma Bell, to name the two that spring to mind.
The "maybe" thing they got wrong was that Pan American would be sending people up in a Delta winged SSTO air/spacecraft. Now possibly the truth would be more along the line of the passenger ship sitting on top of a Big Booster, like "Super Heavy" by SpaceX. But the passenger ship's tail was beveled, and that gets it wrong even for the Space Shuttle. And one other glaring omission I remember: no heat shield. You'd think they'd have thought to paint the ventral surfaces of the wings and fuselage a different color, preferably jet black, to simulate ablative tiles, like those on the Space Shuttle and on Starship.
While I'm on the subject, I thought of one other thing they got wrong: that the gait of people in the shirt-sleeve environment aboard Clavius Base would be exactly the same as on Earth. Those guys would be bouncing like gazelles, as we famously saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin doing during Apollo XI. Arthur Clark, when he novelized the screenplay, fixed that - at least on the Big Wheel, which he guessed would maintain the one-sixth g of the Moon and not the standard g of Earth.
That said, I noticed that they configured USS Discovery and the Soviet spacecraft Leonov (2010: The Year We Make Contact) to have centrifuges for artificial gravity, for a mission not lasting more than maybe a year.
This reminds me of something I learned once upon a time. When trains were first built and were becoming popular, there was a non-zero number of people who believed trains would cause a variety of issues. From causing insanity due to noise to the body not being able to take speeds much higher than those of a horse. Of course now we live in very loud cities and go speeds of 600mph when flying.
That might all be BS, I'm no historian, but I remember learning that somewhere along the way.
Recent in-flight phone video suggests that flying does induce madness and poor behavior.
im pretty sure they also thought people would suffocate because all the air would go to one end of the carriage
@@LeoV2 and you would suffocate if you jumped from a plane. no, without a parachute you would be alive until you hit the ground @ 120mph, barring a heart attack or something.
here in France an hi-speed air cushion hovertrain was experimented in the late 60's (the Aérotrain). Farmers nearby complained that the 400+ km/h passing-by monorail made cows milk go sour XD
When a tunnel with a gradient was built in Victorian times, somebody calculated that if the brakes failed at the top, the train would come out at the bottom going 250mph, sucking air out of the lungs of the passengers.
To be fair, third class was open wagons in those days. You probably wouldn't want to stick your head into an air-stream at that speed (though two airline pilots have done it and lived)
A very interesting survey of the topic, thank you. One point you haven't mentioned is that the radius refers to the distance from the center of rotation, which is not necessarily the same as the size of the spaceship. For example, Robert Zubrin in his book "A case for Mars" suggests a system in which the spaceship is tethered to its booster by a long cable, creating a system of weight and counter-weight that can rotate around its center of weight, and the radius there is only limited by the strength to weight ratio of the connecting cable.
I think this was also the design of the ship in "Stowaway".
Performing ordinary tasks under small radius artificial gravity looks to be a pretty uncomfortable situation, because of the need to move around, but if the primary goal is to resist muscular and skeletal degradation on longer space missions, merely *sleeping* in rotational gravity, perhaps of more than 10m/s^2, would be enough. A centrifuge "donut" inside a Starship hull might have a diameter of perhaps 8 meters, circumference of around 25 meters. Room for 8 or more "head to toe" bunks around the circumference. Folks ready for bed climb in and then the centrifuge is balanced and spun up against a counter-rotating weight donut closer to the center (so it doesn't spin the overall craft). Lying prone with respect to the radial force would probably mean that even left/right motions of the head wouldn't be vomit inducing because they wouldn't change orientation with respect to the direction of motion. At sleep cycle end, centrifuge spins down and everybody climbs out... 8 hours/day of 1.0 (or more) G might be enough to do the job...
Honestly didn’t expect something so simplistic. Pretty great idea with easy implementation to current systems.
I feel like it makes more sense to spend your waking moments under gravity, since that's when your muscles and bones are usually under load. when you're lying down you're not experiencing any forces along your spine / legs.
This is a question I've had for years, why we haven't built a rotating space station. I assumed there was some reason (that I didn't understand) where it wouldn't actually work. Apparently, it can work, it just hasn't been built yet. Thanks for answering that.
Because it would cost hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars
@@Djamonja That's really dependent on the cost to get mass into orbit. SpaceX may be addressing that problem.
I know this isnt the same thing, but as someone who pulls high g in an airplane and also had to do high g centrifuge training...the centrifuge is way worse, it is not the same as g in the jet, it feels different and I recall it being more disorienting and more difficult to tolerate as well.
Nobody, simply, needs gravitation in space station so much. The opposite, zero-gravity is much more useful for science experiments.
It could be achieved by tethering two spacecraft together. The "large structure" portion would be the long simple strap. It would have to be very strong (possibly carbon nano fiber), but otherwise nothing more than a strap.
Hmm, the old end tune has so much more personality and joy!
It's like when the "Doctor Who" theme was "modernized".
I think the new one is fine, but just a bit loud compared to the rest of the video lol
Couldn't agree more!
agreed...don't hate the new one ( it's a bit loud and a little abrupt ) but I liked the old one better
@@MrGoesBoom in my opinion its bland. Previous one had character, you could instantly tell he is just a space geek (in best possible way, no slight intended) talking about his passion.
And the beatboxing one used to automatically bring a smile on my face :D
Love the videos Scott 🤘🥳 thank you for all the awesome content 🙏
If rotational (angular) velocity is an issue, one can always lower the rotation by using two spacecraft of equal mass connected together by a long tether. The longer the tether, the lower the angular velocity needed to achieve 1G. And hence the less effect of rotational compensation.
Exactly. No need for a whole ring. That's something that looks cool on screen, but it would have to be too big if you wanted to keep the Coriolis forces small enough.
As there's no lack of space in space, there's really no reason you couldn't just put the tanks of fuel you need for deceleration on a tether and use them as a counterweight and get all the gravity you need just by rotating that system. It would make turning a bit hard, but still doable. Besides the rotating ring resists attempts to change direction as well.
Bingo a tether and counterweight is all you need.
"Planet size chunks of mass are great for living on, but they're kind of inconvenient to carry along if you're doing spaceflight." Technically, that's exactly what we are doing: spaceflight on a planetary size chuck of mass.
Problem is that every year we come back to the same spot.
@@joelellis7035 Do we? I'll give you that with respect to the sun, but if the arms of the Milky Way is rotating, and we are inside one, then aren't we orbiting the centre of that galaxy.
@@joelellis7035 Sort of, but not really. But for your point, I think it's a valid point. We are being dragged along by the Sun as we travel through space. So, though we come back to the same place in respect to the Sun as we were last year, we are nevertheless in a different place in space overall. The reason I said your point is still valid is because everything else in close proximity to us is being dragged right along with us. lol So it's all still there when we come back around the Sun - which is what I think your point is. And it's correct. LOL!
OK, but we cannot control the movement of the Earth, so Earth, while technically speaking is a spacecraft, it's not a good one though.
@@eliaspeter7689 slap some rockets on it, job's a good'un. :P
A classic symptom of gravity affecting the way we function, is an ocean voyage, on a medium sized vessel. One gets used to the motion over time, but on reaching land, it takes some time to adjust back to a relatively normal gait.
This doesn't even need an ocean voyage to get used to that effect. A few years ago I regularly took a train to work that went over relatively uneven terrain so every hill and every turn caused significant forces. Because the train often had very few free seats, I often had to stand next to the doors. With about an hour of commute per day, it took only a few weeks until I could stand or even move around in that environment without holding on to anything, yet the trips were short enough to not get land-sick.
A while later, I was on a ferry from Ireland to France. My friends had real trouble walking in a straight line (made even worse by the wavy decorative pattern on the carpet). I on the other hand had no trouble applying what I had practiced on the train and could move around the ship just as easily as I can on land.
I once knew a guy who burned out the back of his eye using a high powered laser (ND:YAG, I think).
There were blind spots near the center of his vision, but he stopped noticing it after a while.
The brain adjusts. It processes information differently when it needs to.
That’s not gravity.... that’s movement.
In a boat your still on the surface of the earth... the force of gravity is the same as on land.
@@karenthomson9749 The amount of gravity is the same, the direction is not. When a ship rolls on the waves, gravity doesn't point straight down anymore from a passenger's frame of reference which can be disorienting, especially when you can't see the horizon. Movement adds to this, making it worse. In the end it doesn't matter where the forces come from, we can only feel the sum of all forces that act on us and can't really differenciate what comes from movement and what comes from the floor not being orthogonal to the direction of gravity, especially when both change relatively quickly.
@@karenthomson9749 People in orbit mainly experience a difference caused by movement. The force due to gravity in orbit and the surface are similar. At the international space station gravity is approximately 88% of what is experienced on the surface of the Earth. The movement of the space station is what makes the human experience of weightlessness in orbit, the gravity is not drastically different in orbit.
OMG Mr. Manley, the first part was from Elite Dangerous, my most loved game. And a game with such accuracy that one might find intimidating of how Stellar Forge actually predicted many phenomenas like Thorne-Zhytkov objects and planet collisions. The game spawns and entire Milky Way among it's servers and the level of accuracy is astounding.
Because many of us love space, we can explore space with spaceships based on real theoretical drives, called FSD (Alcubierre Drive).
Thank you for this lovely video :)
o7 and be well.
Thank you for an excellent description of this topic.....you good looking hunk of astronautical knowledge....loving yall
After viewing this video, I'm left with the vivid mental picture of Scott explaining to his very young schoolmates the physics of why they feel dizzy after spinning on the playground.
Yes, a bald 6 years old kid
@@rogeriopenna9014 Yeah, that, and the kid who always had his hand up in class.
i used to that, until i realized the teachers did not give a crap and just wanted to teach the lesson and get their paycheck...
When I was a teenager, a friend and I worked at a fair for a week and got unlimited free access to a lot of the rides in payment (when we weren't working of course). Our favorite was the spinning centrifuge 'starship' ride. It had slanted sides and a closed, solid ceiling. And when it got going, the sleds you would lay against would shift towards the ceiling. Now I get motion sick pretty easy, but over the course of all our times riding it, which probably totaled over an hour or 2, we adjusted enough to sit up and move around and my friend was even able to stand on the sled, much to the annoyance of the ride operator. The human body can totally adapt to a rotating station design. As well as higher Gs.
Was called the Gravitron around where I live.
It was called Roundup here.
@@dr.velious5411 roundup is a bit different as I recall.
@@mytech6779 Is s it? My bad.
Just because you can stand it on a ride for a minute doesn't mean your body can adapt to it ... you know, kind of like weightlessness in outer space.
2001 A Space Odyssey is my favourite movie, and probably instrumental in getting me into engineering...along with Star Trek of course. Great video, Scott!!!!
Instrumental. Nice pun! But you are right. In 1968 I had no problem believing that the world it depicted would be possible in 2001. After all we were on the verge of going to the moon, and it was 33 years away. Oh, well--and we are still not there!
Loving the channel. Love the Elite Dangerous footage in this one Commander.
I love how they visually explained the Coriolis effect in the expanse
Which season did they do it in? Would like to see it!
@@2660016A a good bit in the first season
low earth orbit isnt space please correct yourself , space only happens outside of the galaxy thousands of lightyears away and only then its called space.
Season 1, episode 2, pouring drink to a glass.
@@jediknight2350 why is it called a space station then
Babylon 5 had this down extremely well, and one of the huge advantages of the way advanced species was the use of artificial gravity, which the humans didn't posses, and all their ships were rotating models, ofc including the Babylon 5 itself. The people who modeled the B5 were physics nuts, and wanted to make the station as realistic as possible, including trying to make the structure of the station work with rotating gravity
The rotation inside the space station is also used in one critical plot points as a plot device
Rotating spaceships producing _faux gravity_ are total SciFi: Centripital and centrifugal forces ONLY work due to g forces.
*You would, therefore, have astronauts floating inside a rotating fuselage LOL.*
@@johnjohn-cs9eu you have got to be joking
Then there's the torch-ship approach to artificial gravity. If the ship is always accelerating, the floor is towards the rear of the ship.
Think the expanse, but the idea was around long before the expanse.
@@johnjohn-cs9eu You are not very smart are you?
You're welcome. I was one of the original designers of B5 and yes we were/are massive space nerds. We tried to sneak in as much real physics in the show as we could. The plot point you refer to is that the writer of the show JMS wanted to put a monorail public transit system through the rotational axis of the station (because it looked cool). We explained to him that the monorail would be at zero G since the angular momentum would be very small. So we then had a deep conversation as to what would happen if someone fell out or was ejected. After looking at the scenario I concluded that the person would experience zero G until the moving mass of the atmosphere would induce angular momentum on the person which would then cause them to drift towards the surface. As they got lower they would be subject to faster atmospheric velocity which in turn would cause them to 'fall' faster. So big plot tension and the physics works. We had a huge amount of fun on B5 working out real consequences to plot situations. It was also why when we depicted the interior we had tubular clouds shrouding parts of the monorail. At the end of the day nobody would ever design a monorail there but JMS insisted. Just to confirm the ship was a kilometer across and the spin rate was correct. I was very happy with our Starfury launch system. it was dramatic and it would really work that way.
I found the artificial gravity concept in "Stowaway" (2021) to be really cool (around the 9minute mark). Slight axial rotation of the primary vehicle, then a counterweight that rolls outward along a track protruding from the vehicle, continuing outward then locking in place when 1 G is achieved. The entire structure is in a sense 'flung' through space, like someone throwing a long twig with a ball attached to the end.
That Coriolis force sounds like what you feel after getting off a treadmill, feels like you're walking super fast.
That's inertia, not Coriolis
@@feynstein1004 Interia is something entirely different.
The experience is motor/perceptual aftereffects, called “treadmill illusions."
There is a serious near-future need for a rotating space station. Research is needed into how much "gravity" is necessary to stave off loss of bone and muscle mass. A rotating station can run at 1/6, 1/3, 2/3, etc for different stints, with the crew then medically tested for the known effects. This will let us know how much G is needed for a voyage to Mars. Constant exercise on the ISS only ameliorates the zero-g effects and is a waste of crew time.
Also, large-scale experiments need to be done on lunar construction materials and techniques. These will be much more easily done in LEO with its quick and relatively cheap accessibility.
2 or 3 StarShips connected from their bottom, rotating each 90 sec can simulate Mars gravity in the payload area.
Those can be used to test Mars agriculture, and to keep the astronauts in shape to live in Mars.
@@JacintoFranca Better to connect them from the nose with a long cable since that would ensure that the orientation of the acceleration is the same as the vehicle is configured for on takeoff, rather than upside down.
@@rlaxton666 Spinning Starship in any form but along the middle axis means giving up the primary protection it currently has against ionizing solar radiation - putting the propellant tanks between the humans and the sun. Nevermind the GCRs, of course, which would render everybody onboard sterile in days and riddled with cancer in months...
@@oasntet If this configuration is used only for research in LEO, it should be fine. Also, on a trip to Mars, the main tanks will be vented and only the header tanks will be full for most of the journey, unless they've changed the plan since I last heard (which is likely).
When it rotates... The people will just roll around inside it. The only thing that'll work are magnetic boots.
As a sailor (military so no windows :P) who always gets really sick on the first 2 days at sea I can say that turning your head during motion is indeed really trippy, but a funny thing is that you get to expect it. Eventually you have a pretty good intuitive sense of where everything is and the whole world becomes absolute (fwd/port/stbd/aft) and relative references (front/left/right/back) are almost never used anymore.
The other funny thing is that since you are used to monitor the variations in the gravity vector to know what direction you are facing, when you get on the ground and turn and you don't perceive the expected variation change in the gravity vector, it's like your eyes said you turned but you don't feel like you've turned and it's really nauseating. Imo land sickness is the weirdest, but it is easier to get over than sea sickness.
I'm pretty sure astronauts on a space station would develop this notion of orientation through gravity, though it could take more time because the effects are way more intense than on a ship. The part I would be more concerned about is the difference in force at r - {your height} and r, a large enough radius should be chosen to minimize it.
It will be interesting to discover where the happy medium is for artificial gravity -- where most of the physical effects of low gravity are offset while at the same time the rotations are tolerable for humans and the size of mechanism is feasible for delivery to orbit. I'm assuming that even 2 m/s² would produce major benefits and make long term space flight/residency much more tolerable.
I found this to be very interesting and would like to know more.
A video about the cost of building Clarkes station, comparison to the ISS when it comes to engineering and size etc would be VERY interesting to see.
Also, thanks for all the good content!
Great video as usual, Scott.
Little trivia: I had the privilege of a long chat with Arthur C Clarke en route to LA where the premiere of 2010 was to be held. He told me that one of the problems was that all the designs and blueprints of the 2001 ship had been destroyed - they had to go through the 2001 film again and again to figure out the dimensions and how the set was built!
isnt that like the nasa engineer saying,''we,ve lost the technology to go to space again.''.totoal crock,they were told ''gont come back to the moon'',this is why they only send satelites,, which they ''lose'',sometimes..
@@phantomwalker8251 ???
@@phantomwalker8251 Nobody's saying that we'd lost the technology to go to space. When people are saying that, they probably mean that the engineering and technical knowledge necessary to build deep space rockets has been lost to time due to the passing generations of engineers, and will have to be re-learned. This of course, is practically a non-issue, considering the fact that companies like Space-X are doing perfectly fine.
I love this anecdote! What a pain. The film and TV industries in the middle of the 20th century doesn't seem like it was too concerned with preserving things, eh?
@@Gogglesofkrome humans lost faith, in the knowledge of rendering in space. Not the knowledge of performing it. Scott kept making spin gravity look inadequately to perform, because you can get sick and dizzy after it stops. So would if the Earth did the same! This doesn't mean one cannot render a life time in this dimension realm. Rappit swap of gravity level and momentum is never comfortable or so easly for one to get use to it.
Scott omitted to mention the Gemini XI artificial gravity experiment of 1966. The spacecraft was tethered to an Agena target vehicle, and by firing their side thrusters to slowly rotate the combined spacecraft they were able to generate about 0.00015 g of artificial gravity.
I was going to bring that up, but I'm not surprised someone else already did!
that little amount of gravity would be insignificant compared to the force of the thrusters firing themselves.
I remember one of the astronauts wondering why the tether was bowed.
@@livethefuture2492 That's true but as proof of concept it worked perfectly
@@countzero1136 Yes--the amount of artificial gravity generated by the slowly rotating Gemini/100' lanyard/Agena target vehicle was very small (the last mission, Gemini 12, used the same set-up, but for a gravity gradient stabilization test with the Agena *below* the Gemini, which also worked), but it was enough for loose objects, normally floating in mid-air in the Gemini cabin (checklists, pencils, tools, cameras, etc.) to slowly drift to the aft wall, away from the center of rotation, and:
The large Soviet centrifuge (with the tilted floor) is how we could generate Earth-surface-level 1-g synthetic gravity on worlds whose natural gravity is less than 1-g (the Moon, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter's Galilean moons, Ceres, and even tiny moonlets [like Phobos and Deimos] and small asteroids). The higher the local natural gravity, the less-inclined the floor would need to be; on very small bodies, the floor would be normal to (perpendicular to, or very nearly so) the horizon--it could look like Wernher von Braun's 1950s "wheel" space station, but larger, suspended across a suitable crater. With such large, slowly-rotating buildings (wide in diameter, but being only 1 - 3 [or so] floors "thick," with life support and other equipment in the middle, not necessarily rotating with the rest of the building), we could--as with Gerard K. O'Neill's space colonies (designed for 1 RPM; recent research [see "The High Frontier: An Easier Way"] suggests that most people could live in 4 RPM space colonies, long-term or permanently, with no ill effects)--duplicate Earth-surface gravity, with the Coriolis "peculiarities" reduced to mere quirks for visitors, not nausea-inducing fundamental physiological problems.
Thank you. You are very easy to listen to and easy to understand.
I lost a vestibular nerve two years ago. This video hits me different. Fascinating.
If you're walking down the corridor under seemingly normal gravity, then you realise you've forgotten something and turn round and run in the opposite direction to the rotation, you'll probably get to taste your lunch for a second time.
Lol
Probably?
I've had that happen on Earth.
What happens if I lift my feet? How does the rotating space station exert centrepidal force on me if I'm not in contact with the floor?
@@roberticvs It doesn't - you aren't accelerating, the floor is accelerating towards you. Sort of.
I’m looking forward for hear this magical words “spin the drum!”.
You talking that way about the Drummer to her face?
I think it's incredible that no one else in that universe bothered to make a rotating space station, especially with the medical need for blood clotting.
@@PremierSullivan Plenty of space stations in the expanse universe have spin gravity. The main ones we see in the show are Ceres, Eros, and Tycho station, the first two being asteroids that have been spun up to have gravity, and then Tycho which is a completely artificial structure that uses spin gravity. However, most ships in the expanse don't bother with having spin gravity because they don't need it (under normal circumstances) and the structures needed are heavy and create significant design constraints.
@@johnbuchman4854 maybe I’m old badass pirate.
His death hit me hard man
I honestly got motion sickness from your explanations of motion sickness. Brought me back to the MERRY go round and other similar situations.
I enjoyed those study analysis.
The exercises, and adapting to the anti gravity seems to be the best option as done on the ISS.
👍🛸
Another one well done thank you sir for sharing
Gemini XI did an experiment in 1966 where they used a tether to connect their capsule and their Agena Target vehicle and using their side thrusters to get them rotating bola-style to generate very modest (0.00015g) artificial gravity. The Agena Target vehicles were used to develop many of the Apollo techniques of rendevous, docking, etc.
Thank you for reminding me of that historic Agena rocket stage. The Agena gets so little credit. Bring back Agena!
Realizing that people had conceptualized "humans in zero gravity" before anyone had ever gone to space is... fascinating.
yeah i'm surprised, turns out there's really been a lot of research on space travel, it really is a wonder to me why we haven't gotten space stations and moon bases yet.
Imagine if USA had spent the last 20 years on building a mars base, instead of ...well... remind me again what was it they were doing?
Because man could we have build a lot of stuff in space for $2 trillion.
People have been conceptualizing these kinds of scenarios ever since Newton laid the foundation for Classical Mechanics, way back in the 17th century. Perhaps even earlier.
More than conceptualized, Japanese experienced with human body behavior exposed to the vacuum of space back in WWII. Unwilling test subjects had a tendency to implode in a messy fashion. All the data gathered was traded with the US in exchange of a complete aniesty of the team who had done these pretty unethical tests (also included in the report : how long a body can endure negative temperatures, with complete records of conscious vivisection processed of surviving subjects, and how much blast is needed to disembowel a living human being...)
Don't know how much these documents helped US space program during the space race.
@@MouseGoat throwing bombs in the Middle East for no good reason.
@@Damien.D Implode in a vaccum? I think you are confusing spacecraft/vacuum with submarines/high pressure environments.
Also, even in vacuum I believe that you only get capilliary ruptures, lung expansion injury and 'the bends' - not sure where you got the data on messy implosions/explosions? Maybe you were watching 'scanners'?
Haven't watched Scott's videos for months but right away I can tell his English has improved. He doesn't struggle as much.
I'm a VR developer and once worked in the very early stages of a game set on a true ringworld (i.e. the whole ring is traversible, and the gravity vector changes smoothly, vs faking it like Halo does). We ended up abandoning the concept because of how upsetting moving around in a ringworld is. Even at large ring sizes like 1km, everyone who tried it got very disoriented very quickly as soon as they were in an open space with long sightlines. It's something that I'm sure you could adapt to, but from that experiment, I think the first week would be more miserable than science fiction usually suggests.
And that's just the visual element, ignoring most of the stuff that comes up in this video!
Is the game released? I own a headset and it'd be nice to play the game if its worth it
You could try using a beaded torus instead of a ring, so you may have 12 domes connected in a ring that rotates around, and in each dome you could have an artificial sky so it would look more earthlike.
That's interesting, but I think that's a different kind of sickness that has to do with the visual element not matching what your body expects the motion to be. Like the reverse of motion sickness. Getting sick because your brain expects motion but there is none. If there ends up being a similar visual sickness on a space station, they can always take out the windows. But this particular issue won't be there because the motion will be there
Wow, very curious to take a look. Is there any video demonstration available?
I remember these separate pro-spin and anti-spin ladders between the floors of the rotating spacestation. I saw this in the American Industrial Design Standards book, which was translated to Russian in the 70's.
Sounds interesting. Can you tell us more about this? Is there a picture somewhere?
@@RCAvhstape If it's the same one, I think the picture was in a Scott Manley video in the last few months. I thought Atomic Rockets had it too, but I can't find it on the artificial gravity page there. It might have come from the BIS or JPL, probably 1930s or 1940s. Anyway, it's a drawing of a ring-shaped space station with a habitable central axis (with no artificial gravity there, of course), and there are several paths between those two parts. Two of those paths are staircases in the shape of spirals (looking at the whole station), and the others are straight. IIRC, the spiral paths are widely considered unnecessary today.
@@IDoNotLikeHandlesOnYT Oh god! Imagine decending a spiral staircase when the gravity is constantly changing and the coriolis effect pulling you different ways as you move around the spiral.
@@puskajussi37 It's not the thing that's commonly known as a "spiral staircase" on Earth (which is really helical). Imagine something like a golden ratio spiral, centered on the station's rotation axis and extending in the plane of its rotation. It was designed specifically so that the local "down" direction would be perpendicular to the floor at all points on the staircase (though the gravity strength obviously varies), IIRC. It would seem that it couldn't do Coriolis compensation, though, because that would depend on the direction you're going, but I think that was the point of having two such staircases: one to go up and one to go down.
Another issue with these is that the "down distortion" depends on the speed you're travelling---not just the direction. When stationary, down is straight away from the center, but the faster you move outwards, the more "down" shifts against the rotation (as you're accelerated) and vice versa. With elevators that works, but a human climbing a ladder moves very jerkily.
And for elevators it'd probably be easier to make a tilting capsule. Or not to travel through the hub at all.
If you keep in mind that the rotation will always offset the artificial floor then it may be possible to come close enough to the real thing. In a 2001 styled system, moving in the direction of rotation will always feel like you're going uphill. You could possibly correct for this by modifying the wheel shape into more of a "golden ratio" shape with stairs going up at a few points to compensate for that.
An interesting analogy: when automobiles were becoming possible there were serious discussions on whether going that fast might cause internal injuries. No human in nature had been clocked at over 33-40mph, although we now have thoroughbred horses who can hit 55. Nothing wrong with stopping to think occasionally.
The crampton locomotive could reach 100+ km/h in 1847. The passengers did not suffer from injuries and that should have been common knowledge at the time of "faster" cars.
Hi, hessidave. Thank you for the Crampton Locomotive, which I did have to google. May I share in return the Locomotive Acts, especially the 1865 "Red Flag Act" which always delights me: [from Wikipedia] "... required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons." This was perhaps for safety of others, but the tone certainly matches the then-still-ongoing debates about internal injuries. As to "should have been common knowledge", I'm on your side, but I know someone who deeply desires to "debate" with you about your mistaken notions about the Earth's curvature. He might very well jump on the opportunity to start a paragraph with, "Well, and how do you KNOW we haven't been damaged by auto speeds?" Don't let him.
After a while you'd be able to "feel" directions in side the rotating space station and be able to know which way you are oriented by how it affects movement.
The human brain is highly plastic in this regard. Though I wonder how long it actually would take, and how good it can get.
I remember seeing documentary where they made people where goggles that flipped their vision upside down. They kept falling over for the first few hours, but quickly got used to it and were walking running and soon even riding bikes. we're kind of clever '😁
@@fuzzblightyear145 Also people riding bicycle with the front wheel moving in opposite to the moving of the handles. At first all the riders fall instantly but after some time they managed to ride as their brain understand the proper trick.
@@fuzzblightyear145 And then when you take the goggles off them, they start falling over again for a few hours :D
Great to see the Elite Dangerous space stations with those lovely in game space ships flying away from them. 'Down To Earth Astronomy' channel had an interesting video which touched on the space stations in the game Elite Dangerous in regards to rotational gravity as an interesting video for players of the game. That channel by the way is for Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous computer game player viewers as a note to all so please don't expect Scott Manley or Anton Petrov type content. What a fascinating video Scott, thank you and keep up the great work.
I thought that space station looked like elite. I'm used to seeing it in polygons however.
@@James-mb3je > Its descendant Elite: Dangerous has many more polygons.
Actually, the space stations in Elite (even the original one from 1985 or so) were modelled after the stations in 2001. If you bought the docking autopilot upgrade, it even played the same music as in the movie, while docking. In game, the stations were called Coriolis stations...
Man, you are a good at this subject!
Written like.
Thanks for the video Mr. Manley...
Would be awesome to see rotating space stations. Also I hope the first bar will be called Quark's, because of course
did you know that first mars settlements are planned at utopia planitia? :-)
And the first bar loudmouth will be Morn!
Come to Quark's , Quark's is fun, don't walk, run!
Thank you so much for making this, Scott... Been trying to understand how viable this concept is in reality, and you've managed to help me in this process.
Your models are awesome
I remember reading that sustained rotational gravity like this message up your equilibrium...
Wow, this is the best video I've ever seen about this topic! I've never seen the historical footage you included in the second half. Great stuff, Scott!
That Soviet footage was fantastic stuff.
Really neat, I had no Idea angled living spaces have been placed on centrifuges here on earth! Really cool stuff.
They could do with one on the moon spinning at a rate to create 1g or (Mars g) if they make a moon base and the people there need to get used to heavier gravity before going home or to Mars.
I've heard that the Zero-G planes also give the passengers the effect of Mars or Moon gravity as well as sections of zero G.
Me neither! I would like to see a longer documentary about and footage of them.
Re doing research in a rotation space station, the center could be designed so that it doesn't rotate, with the other circular part of the space station rotating. An elevator can be taken that slows rotation to bring researchers to the 0 gravity center portion of the space station. I think it's just a matter of time before we have this, likely once we are able to make the space station large enough such that the radius is quite large. What would be really amazing is if we put a super large telescope at that center portion. The space station would also allow for servicing that telescope.
Just here to give shout out from Oakland, CA!
The answer is yes, but I’m willing to hear your arguments Scott.
One word: Coriolis 😀 Now I'll watch the video ...
@@VolkerHett oh just make it bigger
@@VolkerHett The answer is still yes, it only raises a question of how big does it need to be. (I haven't watched the video yet, starting now...)
a sufficiently large system is indistinguishable from real gravity. gravity is just fancy inertia anyway
@@phunkydroid Generally, there's a few numbers. You can go with a 100 meter radius @3RPM for 1G, though 3 RPM may require some adaptation to get used to. You could also theoretically use a 223.5 meter radius @ 2RPM for 1G.
I never really made the connection but, I had vertigo twice in as many years. Each time it was an absolutely horrible experience. Each time, it came on suddenly. Even before I opened my eyes, it felt like the room was spinning. When I did open my eyes and tried to site up, it was as if I stood up suddenly on a fast-spinning merry-go-round. I instantly fell, while constantly feeling like I was in a spin. All of this happened in a third-world country, and I was the only one with a driver's license. What turned out to be a really bad choice and decision. I drove myself to a medical clinic, about fifteen minutes from home. Praying and driving as cautiously as possible, and with my wife helping with where I and the car was at every moment, we made it to the clinic.
Translating that experience with a rotating space station, I can't imagine how they will adapt if it is at all similar to the vertigo experience I had...twice. In case you are wondering. Vertigo is an awful condition. You are spinning while being still. When you move, the feeling is how I would imagine a fidget would feel as it spins and you rotate it while it is spinning. That is if a fidget could feel.
Agree with how horrible Vertigo is. I had it for two weeks (sinus infection), and I couldn't sleep for long periods, as I was getting the spinning effect in my dreams, which would make me ill enough to wake up! Ugh....
@@johnf7683 Two weeks!
It's really odd while laying down on a floor too..you KNOW you're flat on a floor but you automatically keep trying to adjust for tilt to keep from sliding around.
"Positional Vertigo" is like that, when the particles in the snail-shaped thing in your ear break loose and float around, bumping into the tiny hairs that serve as your internal gyro. It's pretty wild, and typically causes your eyes to start tracking all wrong, pointing all over the place. As Timothy Blazer said, you lay down on the floor and while you know that you're not moving, your brain and eyes keep telling you that you're falling over backwards. There is a solution that you can find online, where you move your head in a certain way, and it moves those particles away from the hairs. It really worked for me, and don't wish to repeat it!
Great video... this has always fascinated me. One thing though that always puzzled me was the centrifugal force differences at different rotational speeds. To simulate 1G at your feet, the floor would have to be rotating at 'x' speed. But given some people are 2m tall, their head is rotating slower than their feet (at 'y' speed). Would the difference be negligible, or would you have a blood flow problem where the blood does not have an even amount of force placed upon it compared to earth's gravity?
If the body had a problem with supplying blood out of position, then hanging upside down would cause death, because that is a 2 G (from +1 to -1) difference. And fighter plane pilots can survive short periods of up to several G, which generally is forcing the blood away from the head towards the feet.
The heart and other systems work well enough to adapt to a zero G overall, from the 1G that they evolved under. So they are pretty flexible in ability to adjusting the pumping of blood and other fluids.
The small differences between the top and bottom of a human under an apparent varying G field are handled with no problem by the body's sensing system which responds to increased and decreased demand to/from the head and extremities.
Thanks, Scott. I've always been curious how much the motion-sickness factor would be reduced on a rotational gravity platform in space, without the conflicting 1G to confuse the sense of balance. Sounds like the Coriolis force would still make it pretty bad? The first time I went to Epcot at Walt Disney World, I was excited to go on the Mission: SPACE centrifugal spaceflight simulator, but though I'm not especially prone to motion sickness, I was left with nasty nausea after the ride, and regretted going on it.
Although that's an especially bad case, due to the frequently changing rotational speed. I never had a problem on Gravitron rides, with their smooth, single spin-up and spin-down. Also a longer arm of rotation on those, I believe, and being able to see outside of the ride may help the brain adjust for the rotation. Plus you can look further away, rather than having to shift your gaze between different close-up displays and control surfaces.
I don't think Coriolis effect will be a problem at all, without the conflicting 1G of planetary gravity, because for motions on the cylindrical surface of a rotational gravity platform in space, Coriolis effect is vertical only. No veering left or right.
If you make the diameter large enough it solves almost all the problems with disorientetion do to corolis and othe effects...
Gemini 11 did an experiment that generated a small amount of artificial gravity by spinning the spacecraft when it was connected to the Agena upper stage via a 30m tether.
Gemini 8 did something similar except it was an accident and they almost died
@@ryanspence5831 one small mishap by Armstrong, one giant scare for NASA.
Great video.. just what I needed "saved".. gonna be perfect that I can explain to my boss at the office that I'm training to be an astronaut when bltching about spinning on my highly expensive officer chair... keep it up, Scott. great work.
Nicely put together! The Elite Dangerous graphics really do work well with this discourse. It is a visually stunning game. Do you still play Elite, by happenstance?
I'm SO EXCITED to find this video. I had the honor and pleasure of working on a project with Walter Reed in 1991-2 as part of my senior year in my school's Engineering program, where our team built a prototype for a testing module to be flown in the Space Shuttle, with the goal to answer this exact question - do human cells react differently between an actual gravitational field vs simulated gravity through centripetal acceleration. Obviously most scientists believed that the centripetal acceleration would prevent the massive tissue loss from zero/microgravity, but it hadn't been proven.
The test module contained a spinning disc (centrifuge) that was accelerated and decelerated in order to maintain a consistent 1g of acceleration throughout the flight, so that the test cells on the centrifuge could be compared to the "control" cells that were static in the module (being fed, etc in the same fashion - but experiencing microgravity during the Shuttle's flight). Obviously the hope was that the test cells (kept at 1g) would be healthier than those that were not spinning, but frankly no one knew for sure.
Our student team even got to go to Houston and test the module in "The Vomit Comet" while astronaut's trained at the other end of the plane. It was pretty great, and the Walter Reed team was ecstatic with our prototype. I only wish I'd gotten to know more about the actual/final test module - when/if was built, the testing results, etc.
EDIT: I found the report we sent to WR: apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADB169986
Hey Scott I just wanted to share that I clicked on this video mostly because I realized I missed you! I used to watch you a ton several years ago, I binged your KSP content and sometimes watched your other content and I really liked you for being a scientific and smart influence in my life, as well as having such a bright personality. Thank you for sharing this video and all others, I really found it fascinating and I was suddenly transported back to my 20 year old self getting lost in the awe of space. Wish you the best my friend, lightspeed!
Scott, you did a great job researching and presenting the archival footage in this episode! Thanks.
Holy ham this was informative! Love that you actually included the math!
An interesting concept in Robert Zubrin's "Case for Mars", for providing rotational gravity very cheaply, relably and simply, on a Mars mission was to use the empty Mars trajectory insertion rocket stage as a counterweight.
Once on the trajectory to Mars from Earth orbit, instead of jettisoning, the empty stage is paid out behind the spacecraft on a line from a spool to a distance of a few hundred metres, (high school physics, which I've long forgotten, tells you how long); retro rockets mounted on both the empty stage and the space craft are then fired in opposite directions to impart rotation about the mutual centre of gravity; varied rotation rates for the same gravitational effect can be achieved by varying the length of line paid out.
The counterweight empty stage can be released, by severing the tether, on close approach to Mars, carefully timed so that the spacecraft is pointing in the correct vector at the moment of release.
This means that the crew get to experience gravity for the whole of both the outward and the return trip.
On return to Earth, the same system can be used, with the added benefit that rotation speed could be incrementally increased over a period of days or weeks to transition from Mars equivalent gravity (0.38G) to 1G, thus minimising the long-term health effects of low/zero G on the human body.
The line needs to be pretty strong though - if the spaceship has a mass of 50 tonnes, then that's going to need to be the very minimum breaking strain of the line - probably carbon fibre - commercially available 10mm carbon fibre rope has a 7000Kg breaking strain.
Nicely done piece on artificial gravity. Great video of US and USSR ground experiments. Thank you, Scott.
This was the video about space that I never knew I needed but definitely had to watch! Thanks. :)
Grew up in Oakland, love your T-shirt!
Be good to have a rotating module for the crew to at least sleep and eat in, so the body doesn't suffer the effects of zero g as much, allowing for longer missions.
Even .5g would be great
@@AlexandreMS71 That's why the cancellation of the ISS centrifuge is such a tragedy. We could have (I argue *should* have) been collecting data for years now using mice and such monitoring bone demineralization and muscle loss in regime after regime: 0.5g constant, 1/6g (moon) constant, or only while sleeping, or only while awake, or 1 day in 3 . . . endless permutations to unlock how much gravity a complex vertebrate needs, and when and how often, to maintain its physiology. To me, the cancellation of the ISS centrifuge clearly defines the ISS as primarily a public relations program rather than a science program. I wish it were otherwise.
@@kengineer09 it'd be so interesting cause for all we know with the right supplements (idk hella calcium maybe) we might only need like 1/3 g to prevent the worst of it.
honestly from what I can tell sleeping in 0g is much more comfortable
@@yobeefjerky42 i don't think it matters when the artificial G is applied (sleeping or working or whatever) as long as you get some hours per day of it. I think that would go a long way.
it doesnt necessarily need to be a whole huge ring superstructure. i always picture something like two boxes spinning around each other. it would be basically the module that everyone stays in, and another module with life support, power, and whatever else was needed that didnt need to be IN the habitation module. and these two would be connected by a long set of cables and the whole thing would spin like two dancers spinning around each other holding hands. if there are negative effects from spinning to fast, just make the cables longer and spin slower.
Hell, you could even double these up in order to counter-balance. By that point you could essentially build very, very long spacecraft with an even number of these modules and create a very large internal volume effectively experiencing gravity.
Neal Stephenson has a spacecraft like this in his novel Seveneves. In the book there are lots of little spacecraft called "arklets." When two of them are joined by a tether and spun around their center of mass they form a "bolo" with simulated gravity. Tethers and spinning are a very interesting idea that could have wide application in the real world.
Basic problem is damping the vibrations ... perhaps something inflated between a web of cable with some chambers that would damp out vibrations of various frequencies.
Easier said than done. Much easier. Especially if you want to transfer anything from one module to another: as it moves along the cable, the center of mass of the whole system changes. Also remember that cables are great in tension, but no good at all in compression. You can't do engineering with words; you have to do the math.
Presumably anything being transferred along the cable will be much smaller than the total mass of the system. Would it change the center of mass that much?
You can feel the effects if you're in an airliner that's making a turn, like if it has to do a 180 after takeoff. During the turn rock your head forward and backward and you'll definitely feel these effects. I think its pretty cool and fun to do.
Also, we've been doing micro-gravity experiments for decades now, has anyone ever discovered anything useful, and even if they did how could it ever be economical at $10,000 per pound (or even $5000/lb)
Centrifugal gravity would eliminate one of the greatest health risks of extended space travel. There could even be facilities on the Moon and Mars to simulate Earth gravity to prevent loss of muscle and bone density. This seems like an excellent area for future research.
Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video. Many thanks for the links to the papers.
an interesting idea would be to see how effective spending your time sleeping in artificial gravity (1G or more)would be to offset the tissue decay at zero g. you don't need to move when sleeping so it could be made fairly compact.
Nearly worthless. We use bed-rest studies on Earth to simulate the health damage caused by zero-gravity. Even sitting reducing the health benefits of gravity. You have to be standing and moving around.
Oh dear, can you imagine the headache after getting up from such sleep? 🤢
It's easier than most people think. Just take 2 separate space stations, 2 ISSs, 2 Starships or 2 space hotels, and tether them together with a long steel cable or other feasible connection, like really long, then have them rotate around the mid-point of the cable. Really slow rotation, like 1 per 5 minutes will give 1g of force easily if the cable is long enough. And will be cheap to do. No issues getting sick or headache, because rotation will not be noticeable for its slowness.
@@Nilmoy I feel like you would need a rigid tether to account for instabilities emerging from movement inside either vessel. 'Feel' being the operative word here - the statement comes with commensurate salt.
@@sir_vix that my friend is called a truss
Making the rotating ring the sleeping quarters and workout area seems best, you don’t need to look around while doing push-ups or while using fitness bands
Hey Scott, I just revisited your video here.
I'm wondering, with the experience of the ISS and other space stations we know that people can work and perform great in a zero G environment over a long period of time.
Would it be a viable option, to have a centrifuge (maybe even with a slightly higher G-force) to have people just sleep in there, maybe additionally as a work out environment to counteract the negative side affects of Zero-G on their bodies ?
Unless they sleep inclined or standing up, it won't help that much. Remember that one way they simulated lower gravity effects is by having people stay in bed for extended periods. If they are inclined (Minbari beds?) in partial spin gravity that might be more effective.
A few people have suggested that it would be relatively easy to supply a lunar level of spin gravity in a larger volume and combine that with a short radius centrifuge for higher pseudogravity workouts.
A smaller area for sleeping is a great idea for optimizing the mass of radiation shielding while also providing a 'storm cellar' in case of major solar radiation events.
I love the way the artificial gravity in The Expanse works
As always great stuff Scott!