Why Don't Spaceships Have Artificial Gravity?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 พ.ค. 2024
- We've seen this done in movies right? Well, why don't spaceships have this technology?
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Sources:
www.techtimes.com/articles/662...
blogs.scientificamerican.com/l...
www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/...
content.time.com/time/magazine...
www.space.com/8384-artificial-...
www.bbc.com/future/story/20130...
www.popularmechanics.com/space...
newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/artifi...
www.geek.com/science/geek-answ...
newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/exerc...
They need to build a space ship floor made of a switchable artificial Higgs field with neutrinos and neon plasma. Everyone knows that. Also, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Neumah To be fair, if there were such a thing as an artificial Higgs field, and it were strong enough, it could absolutely be used for artificial g-forces by pumping your mass high enough to attract the entire spacecraft to your feet. It would also probably require more energy than a star to power, though, so...yeah.
IceMetalPunk BUT WHAT IF WE COULD HARNESS STARS FOR THEIR POWER! And no, I don't mean solar power. More like geothermal. Basically like a world eater of sorts. But with stars.
RedialedRage You mean fusion reactors. You'd still need a huge one.
RedialedRage Look up a Dyson Sphere. You might like it.
IceMetalPunk We can create large amounts of light and sound from relatively little energy. Why couldn't we do that with a Higgs field? What makes creating Higgs fields so horribly inefficient compared to other artificial comforts?
A common misconception in the discussion about simulating gravity through rotation is that the gravity has to be 9.8m/s/s in order to be useful. Surely even a fraction of that (1/3 to 1/2 G) would have great benefits vs. zero G.
Exactly. An idea that I have is that for using artificial gravity for manned space exploration, the artificial gravity that is created would be halfway between the home planet and the destination planet. For example, if we were to go from Earth (1g) to Mars (0.376g), we would simulate artificial gravity of 0.688g so that the astronauts can transition from Earth's gravity to Mars's gravity on the way to Mars, and then transition from Mars's gravity to Earth's gravity on the way back.
I think it does, but the cost effectiveness of it isn't worth it. It costs so much to create that mobility, and it gives little gain.
+Japsters714 Not really. If we simulate less gravity, then the centrifuge could be smaller and still have the same head to feet gravity difference ratio.
Actually, that is true, but that isn't the gain that I'm talking about. Bone deterioration is a result of not having the 1g acceleration that the body is used to on earth. Having less than 1g will almost always have deteriorating effects for human bone, and as long as that acceleration is less than earth gravity, it'll still have the same bone-deteriorating effect.
Using less acceleration would both lessen the cost but also lessen the gain that the astronauts would get from it. So still not cost-effective.
Besides, your transition model does work, but why do we need to do it? We can simply stay at 0g in space then slowly acclimate once we're at mars (or any planet). No need for costs.
Japsters714 "Having less than 1g will almost always have deteriorating effects for human bone"
True, but your bones would degrade a lot slower than if you were in microgravity.
"We can simply stay at 0g in space then slowly acclimate once we're at mars (or any planet). No need for costs."
That plan seems a lot more worse than my plan.
What do you mean there is no Gravity on my spaceship...
***** Well if your Spaceship weighs lets say 30T you will have 0,00000000000000000019906667% form the earth gravity .
Mr Nice Wait wait, let's make a spaceship that's as b̶i̶g̶ massive as the earth, so it'd have gravity then. o_O
Mr Nice All things in orbit around Earth experience over 90% of the gravity we feel here at Earth. But they're in free-fall.
Mr Nice Shouldn't a number that small have rounding errors?
***** Best comment/
why don't we just launch earth in into space?
harley mclachlan lol, you should read star maker by olaf stapledon :P
harley mclachlan lololol!
harley mclachlan **facepalm**
harley mclachlan We're working on that. Each time we fire a rocket our earth is a little step further on its journey.
harley mclachlan At first I just kind of laughed but then I thought about warp drives, from what I know of them they bend space in front of and behind something in order to move it, mass does not seem to be an issue. That being said it might be possible to move much larger things than ships with such devices depending on the amount of resources and will available at the time.
Sci-show space, or "Get bummed out with what an uncooperative jerk physics is"
I still like the velcro option.
Me too
Throw an apple to an astronaut's head. BAM! Gravity.
Hi after 5 years
Oh us silly humans and our class .9ish civilization.
S7one_47 .7-.8ish really
S7one_47 Once we have capable A.I. we could go from class 1 to class 3 in a few femto seconds. Power levels are bullshit.
TheKorzcola do you think there will still be an "us" after the creation on AI? I don't know what I think, it could go either way. It could be our greatest ally or our most formidable enemy.
Of course there will still be an "us" just maybe not as we know it. We may merge with the machine and become a whole new form of life.
They call it the technological singularity because nobody can predict what will happen once A.I. is more intelligent than us.
S7one_47 Well, it doesn't have to be us and them. We could make AI that think and act just like any other humans - just much faster. They'd essentially be human without a body, which could be remedied either through a robotics or b cybernetics - if we could eventually grow a body, you could create an artificial brain and use myoelectric junctions to allow for full muscle control.
Gravity is fake, a conspiracy by the lizard people and the Illuminati, we all know the earth is a cube. *Grabs Popcorn.
No, earth isn't a cube! It's a toroid! Everyone knows that, and whoever doesn't knows nothing about physics! *eats popcorn*
Hey, get your hands of my popcorn!
No! My popcorn!
Jeez you guys are dumb... obviously the world is a disc, mounted on the backs of huge elephants that ride on the shell of the great Turtle A'Tuin as he drifts slowly through space
Joseph Koslowski noooo... it’s a dinosaur!
why was the gemini test necessary? a physics 1 student could calculate how little effect it would have
Chad Eichhorn I mean, why where all the gemini missions necessary anyway? It's not like physics 1 students couldn't calculate that space rendezvour and docking was possible, and that space walking was a thing hahaha, I mean, space program is a joke. hahaha am I right?
Pretty much anything before Apollo was to prove that people didn't die immediately upon going into space.
Chad Eichhorn Because you can only find out about the things you havn't thought about by actually doing them. Yes, you can predict a lot of what will happen in a spaceship or aircraft before launch, but the only way to find out if there are issues and problems that you havn't even imagined yet is to actually do it. The real purpose of the Gemini flights was to both test the technology for Apollo before the big rockets were ready, and to build up useful experience of space operations so that the Apollo astronauts were "old hands" (relatively) by the time they tried to go to the moon.
They had to prove that it was possible to unhitch and redock from a lander before they started the Apollo missions that involved unhitching and reattaching. Also keep in mind that it took humanity only 9 years from the Russians putting Yuri Gargarin in space to the US landing. That's pretty quick. We've had cars for 10x that long and they're still internal combustion engines that don't fly. Theoretically, it could have been quicker but NASA played it safer because an astronaut dying in space would have been a PR nightmare and could have turned the public against the program.
carschmn One thing about our U.S. Space program's history you seem to have forgotten is that some of the astronauts actually perished on the launch pad. One incident was when their was a fire in the capsule that incinerated three astronauts, all due to a faulty electrical connection, and the hatch design being one that did not allow escape. That was an horrific incident indeed. Yet we continued marching on, and rightly so, if for no other reason than to honor those brave men that lost their lives in the name of progress. Each time an incident has occurred that took the lives of astronauts, we did not just sit on our hands and give up the struggle to make spaceflight a reality. Instead we investigated each incident and learned from it, thereby gaining knowledge that led us in new and safer directions.
And don't think for a minute that the USSR did not suffer incidents too. In fact they suffered more, and still they did what we did;. investigating, and learning from the mistakes, and not giving up.
@dnews would we have to have a complete circle with a km long diameter or could we make a pendulum type ship with half a km long arm that spins around the thruster/guiding ship? if cut out roughly 300° of the sphere you take away a lot of building expense. I understand that it would have Balance issues with trust but you'd be pushing less weight anyway. maybe even have two living/working pods a km apart with the thruster ship halfway between connecting them.
@scishow ***
You explain things very well. Thank you!
would it have to be a disk? Couldn't it just be two pods joined by a long tube?
Dinosaur Emperor It could technically just be one pod and a counter weight. The important thing is rotation. The disk offers more useable space, and I am not sure that one is significantly more cost efficient than the other.
Mohogany Guy 1869 cost would all amount to how easy it is to get things into space. The larger the radius, the more comfortable it would be to be inside. having tethered pods would allow for larger radius with very little added mass and material needed (just need a longer tether). While a torus or ring design, although giving much more usable area with simulated gravity, would require enough material to fill the full circumference of the "orbit" If we get really good at sending things to space, then we might see full rings, but i think we will see tethered pods first.
Dinosaur Emperor i think a disk would be more structurally stable because the forces are more evenly distributed.
Hamstray not if you balance the pods right. If they are closed systems, then you won't have any change in mass, and even if they are not fully closed systems, you can have a ballast system that moves water or something along the tethers to the pods ensuring that all you wouldn't get a wobble in the rotation
Kyle A no, that's not what I'm talking about. I mean the forces acting on the tube could very well rip it apart.
Couldn't you just use a series of capsules, circling around a common center? You could Start with a small ring, but let the capsules move outwards with cables, like an elevator. You'd get a giant ferris-wheel, with separate capsule that could easily be a lot larger than 100m in diameter.
From what I understand. The larger the diameter, the lower the difference of gravity between head and feet for each human. So if you had those capsules rotate in 500m or 1000m distance, it should technically work.
Even most sci-fi implementations of that idea use gigantic Wheels. I don't remember any implementation that would "only" be 100m in size. Even though that's quite large for our current space-programs, it kinda isn't if you think about space-stations and interstellar travel.
True but when we start dealing with thousand metre radius type lengths the tether and counterweights need to be strong enough to withstand forces.
Not to mention trying to calculate if it'll be sweeping through the path of any other satalites
It's a really good for longterm type missions though
S Clair This is the kind of thing you'd take to Mars. You need more stuff than fits in a single rocket anyway, so you just tether 2 spacecraft and spin them up while in interplanetary space. The rope only needs to be able the weight of the ships at the gravity created. We can do waaaay more than that.
liquidminds Moving between the capsules would be a problem, though.
1ucasvb if you can add capsules later on, it' a way to build a huge ring from smaller components.
liquidminds One trick is to get them rotating fast enough. It takes a lot of fuel to spin them up to 156 miles per hour and slow them down again!
w = (9.8 m/s^2 / 500 m) = 0.14 hertz
v = r * w = (500 m) * (0.14 hertz) = 70 m/s = 156 mph
www.digipac.ca/chemical/mtom/contents/chapter1/rotation.htm
Your show is amazing guys! Keep up the great work! I'm a great fan!
If the US would spend half the money they spend on war on space they could do this all
You're a genius
even 1/4 of the military budget (200billion I think correct me if I'm wrong) would likey pave the way for much greater technologies and more advanced probes and spacecraft, better research into space and so on. the fact that NASA works all that they do on their budget (18.4 billion I think) is pretty impressive
+Awsea they are cannon fodder anyway
Larger budgets pay for facilities, operational costs, prototypes and equipment. But the science community doesn't operate like a corporation where possession of talent (salaried employees) is vital. Theoretical physicists talk to each other and share papers and theories globally constantly. Meaning unless the theorems and science for something like artificial gravity are there, throwing money at an organization like NASA isn't going to get us there any faster. People like to think it does because we've been advertised to by charity organizations our whole lives that if we donate to x cause we'll be that much closer to a cure/solution/etc. But it's false advertising. The money you donate goes towards keeping the labs open. It doesn't and can't speed up the human capacity to theorize a solution.
don't worry, soon humanity will spend on war in space
I object! The Enterprise's gravity generators are not invisible! They're just covered by deck plating and carpeting ;).
It's just not ambitious enough. If the station is big enough the differences from head to feet will be very low, and the speed necessary would be very low as well. You could make something much like the halos in Halo. Well, theoretically...
Ze Rubenator First we need to revolutionize how we send things into space. Sending stuff into orbit is currently way, WAY too expensive to even think about building something really big.
Ze Rubenator having a "ring" or torus shaped station, although would work, it would be expensive. I think it is more likely that the first simulated spacecrafts will use a tethered pod design. that way you can get large radii, while not having to send up a lot of material to fill up an entire ring.
Ze Rubenator I've watched a video about this. (I'm pretty sure it was in SpaceTime's channel.. check out out if you wanna). they pretty much said that the Halo was too big, and no material would be able to support the weight.. But you are exactly correct, if you make a big disk/cigar shaped craft that is big enough, without being too big, to be able to spin slow enough to generate the proper gravity, with a minimum difference between head and feet, it could potentially work..
I think..
This is what I wanted the video to be about. Not just shutting the possibilities down right away, maybe talk about how it could work in theory. Just like was said above, if it was big enough it could move very slowly and our tiny height wouldn't make be a factor if the craft was large enough. Also without a visual or gravitational frame of reference to know you are spinning, I don't think motion sickness would be a problem.
And I realize this probably isn't possible with current tech, but what's the point of limiting every idea to what we currently have or what is currently within reach?
Making a plan and pushing science to innovate towards that goal is basically how we got to the moon
Dahxelb I watched the PBS Space Time video you cited, and it actually states the opposite. The stresses the Halo would face would be manageable with a simple steel construction. The issue is that it would take so much metal to build that it wouldn't be practical for humanity to build one. That said, the Halo installations use a Halo-universe specific super-dense material, and a Halo-universe specific technology: hardlight reinforcement -to maintain their structural integrity. They actually overcompensate for what the bare minimum requirements would be.
I love your show guys. Thanks for filling up my brain with stuff that i like
You answered my question! Thank you!
spin them while they sleep... that way the astronauts are lying down and not becoming as disoriented when they move. i believe the vessel at 3:02 would be useful to test it out.
NOONTIDE actually a pretty good idea, it'd be interesting to see if the effects of simulated gravity are important enough while lying down to slow or even stop bone mass loss. Interesting prospect nonetheless. An cylinder of a great enough mass could be used as kinetic energy storage to avoid energy loss.
Laurent Beardsell I'm sure it would being in fake gravity 1/3 of the time is better than none
You should do a video on Project Orion , which would have been a nuclear ( bomb ) powered spacecraft , which could have vastly shortened times for interstellar travel .
Thomas PlaysTheGames check out VASIMR
Lone Wulf
wow , a ISP of 5000 , though it only puts out a measily 5 newtons of thrust ( with a 200kw model ) the only problem would be getting power . Also , as a side question , where did you get your name from ?
This was a really cool episode!
If you've read 'The Expanse' they simulate gravity with thrust. This the postulates ships that are more like skyscrapers where down is the engines and up is the nose, but each deck is accessed by an elevator. Keeping large ships at about 1g of thrust would not be so difficult, but we'd need fuel sources to become more economical.
A video about rotating space ships and not one mention of the coriolis effect, oh I am mad, very mad indeed.
So when can I train at 500x time Earth Gravity
Never, since the human body may not even survive 4x Earth's gravity, due to probably insufficient blood flow to the brain. Even with genetic engineering or advances in bio-tech, it may be unlikely that a human being could survive much more than that. Let's take an unfortunate individual and give him the weight of an average man, 195 lbs. Once he's launched into orbit, he'll be experiencing microgravity. Gravity doesn't simply "stop" once you reach space, it becomes so minute that the human body can't detect gravity and instead experiences weightlessness. Let's send this individual to another planet (we'll call it Planet G) and assume that this planet has exactly 10x Earth's gravity, and it will take several months to reach this planet from Earth orbit. In the time it takes our individual to reach Planet G, his skeleton will go through a slight decay. One of the primary functions of the skeleton is to support and protect the body from gravity. When an astronaut begins to experience microgravity, this function is no longer necessary, and the skeleton will begin to decay after several days. Because of this, when landing back on Earth, mobility is difficult for an astronaut. This is why astronauts returning from the International Space Station need medical assistance once they've landed back on Earth. When our individual reaches Planet G, however, he will be landing on a planet with 10x Earth's gravity after several months of microgravity. If he would have difficulty returning to Earth at 195 lbs, imagine landing on Planet G where he would weigh 1,950 lbs, just 50 lbs shy of a ton (short ton)! Even if we teleported our unlucky individual straight from Earth's surface to Planet G's, he would probably be subjected to the same fate. From this, we can assume that survival would be very much unlikely. If this is what happens at a mere 10x Earth's gravity, just imagine trying to even exist in 500x Earth's gravity. Our unfortunate individual would probably be soup, if he's lucky. Real world physics is often times a serious buzzkill.
+potterfandf So basicly I can Never be Vegeta or Goku😔😔😔 :(
Emmanuel Nwancha Probably not, but that doesn't mean you can't be cool.
How to be Vegeta: Never be the best, no matter how hard you try. Thus, we're probably all Vegeta, on the inside.
Hey, you can't be vegeta, BUT, YOU CAN BE YAMCHA!
Woo?
He's back finally!!🙌🙌🙌
love this guy
What about metallic, magnetic suits and magnetic floor.
+Mark S In part that's true, but it does solve the bone and muscle growth problem, because you're doing the excersise needed for them to grow the right way, anyhow, the blood and the liquids are still a problem, with the exception of the ear fluids, there's an experiment (with mosquitoes, they have the same ear fluid mechanic) that shows that mosquitoes born in space can handle the orientation quite well, even with that fluid thing
+Mark S I'm not saying that strapping with it, the magnetic suit would make the whole body heavier, it's not just strapping onto the ship.
+Sebastian Salgado You mean that the whole suit would be magnetic ? It wouldn't work because the magnetic attraction would have a too short range. When standing up, only your feet would be attracted with enough strengh for you to notice, the attraction force would be too faint from you knees and above. That wouldn't be any different than floating with the feet attached to the surface.
+theslay66 It doesn't have to have the same amount of strenght on feet and chest for example, it could have a stronger attraction power in the chest than in the feet.
+Sebastian Salgado Well, it could kind of work maybe, but you'll need some extremelly powerfull magnetic field at head's heigh for the effect to be felt like a uniform attraction on the whole body -just imagine strapping 2 magnets, one at your feet and one at your head, the head one would need to be extremelly powerfull compared to the one at your feet. That's because you are very near the source of the magnetic field generated by the surface you're standing on, so this field would diminish very rapidely with height.
Now if you managed to make a suit that worked like you propose, maybe it would be ok while you are standing still. But crouch a little and the powerfull magnet on your head will suddenly apply a stronger force and crash it directly into the ground... Doesn't look very safe to me :p
The artificial gravity source in most sci-fi space ships must be extremely robust and low powered. Space ships can suffer complete power failures, be found derelict and drifting through space, have the s*** blown out of them by hostile ships but in all cases the 'artificial' gravity carries on working just fine.
+Tom Cho *life.
Life: 20 days after a comment someone corrects my spelling.
Tom Cho lol
+bob s Probably because in these sci fi, the space ship's artificial gravity is it's own contained system not reliant on power. A specially developed material or arrangement of materials might be the excuse. Perhaps it is turned on or off only because it has been disrupted or arranged properly. Who the hell knows... It's not real anyway.
+bandrukesucks The real reason is because it saves a fortune in special effects.
Your voice is enchanting.
You said “centripetal acceleration” instead of something wrong. I love you.
CERN needs to hurry up in discovering Gravitons and how to generate them.
I always hated those spinning rides haha
I like them
I, for one, appreciate the fact that you put centrifugal force(which for those that don't know is the name for the imaginary force[it's not actually pushing you outwards but instead inwards] that we call centripetal force)
Excellent!
I couldn't help but think about the halo rings from the game.
***** I know their scale isn't 1:1 -_-
SilverSlayer23 They can spin much slower to simulate gravity! Even a 1km diameter disk should be able to spin much slower and disorient much less! That's much more feasible than one of the Halo ringworlds, but still about 10× the length of the ISS.
We _can_ build a 100 meter radius spacecraft, it's not easy nor cheap but we can.
Another problem would be the Coriolis effect. Throwing a ball inside a rotating space ship would not be the same as throwing a ball on earth. The same pseudo force that contributes to the circular motion of the wind on earth would make a ball ,that is thrown vertically, seem to bend and make an arched path. Also, a person running in the direction of the rotating spaceship would make a person heavier and running in the other direction would make a person lighter. Standing up would also become a problem, a person would feel pushed. It is in fact the Coriolist effect that contributes to the swirling of the fluid in the vestibular system as explained in the video.
kudos for getting it right and calling it centripetal force :)
Artificial gravity is actually centrifugal force if you think about it. It's your inertia that is "forcing" (even though centrifugal force is not a true force and is only a result of inertia) you into the walls of the spinning ship, simulating gravity. The force pushing up on your feet, counteracting the centrifugal force, is the centripetal force, but that is pushing up from the floor which is the exact opposite of gravity, that pulls you into the floor. The centripetal force's analogy on the surface of the earth would be the electromagnetic repulsion from the electrons in the solid earth that prevents gravity (the centrifugal force's worldly analogy) from pulling you all the way to the earth's core.
That is NOT artificial gravity. Artificial gravity is having some sort of plate on the floor that draws matter towards it. WAY more complicated.
If a tree fell in space would you hear it scream?
Cooks With Spoons if I fell on you in space, would you hear Donald trump grabbing her by the pussy?
This is really cool.
Paused at 2:25...what an amazing picture. So self explanatory, even day and night would work.
Nautilus-X was an amazing concept, a shame there is never enough political will for science/space things, wish someone just strip away a good piece of the military share and transfer it to science/space.
well all those issues are true, but I think human bodies wouldn't need a 100% 1G not to deteriorate though. they could just live their life in let's say the central module without any spin, and spend the rest of their time in the spinning wheel, probably in a lay down position. If it could result in a 70% time at 1G that would sound like a decent compromise.. Hell they wouldn't even need so much time in the central module to be honest
I'm reminded of "Rendezvous with Rama". That ship used centripetal force to create artificial gravity, but it was also so huge (20km diameter x 54km long) that your head and feet felt relatively the same forces.
Oh.
That's why flying saucers are always depicted as being disks that spin around.
Ellie Johnson nope
No shit that's not correct, +Piotr Nikadon, i was simply making a silly joke that i hoped people would find funny.
I really hope that new branches of science will be born during my lifetime so I can experience them first-hand ; I also hope they will allow for things previously thought impossible such as... well, nothing is impossible. I'm now just writing my thoughts down...
Alleczu The1st "previously thought impossible." The television was thought impossible and now we take it for granted and some of us don't even use it.
***** Yep... just bit the bullet there.
Also I miss you Deidara! Reference to a certain popular anime.
RedialedRage Some things are meant to become obsolete as our civilisation progresses... It is quite that some things are simply taken for granted or left behind... although in a different period of time, they seemed like one of the best things in the world.
Alleczu The1st creating or destroying energy is impossible
Alleczu The1st a sufficiently strong, consistent, axiomatized formal theory of basic arithmetic cannot possibly be negation complete. Check out Kurt Gödels work. His theorem is so powerful it even proves that somethings are indeed impossible.
I wish there was a way to use electomagnetism. I've read that electomagnetism allows small particles to group together into large objects in space in place of gravity's relatively weak force... But I can't for the life of me think of where to even _begin_ making it so that we could use that in place of gravity on a space station.
Red Rogue Lots and lots of rubber....
+Red Rogue You mean like that video where they suspend a frog in mid-air with magnets? Hmm. If you did that much more powerfully and could have the force all directed to the floor, that would be great, except for the part of not being able to use metal anywhere.
neeneko Astronauts would wear furry boots to maintain contact?
yes but particles have to be ionized first which is impractical as you'd have to ionize every particle in your body to feel the effect and you'll probably die long before then..
yes but particles have to be ionized first which is impractical as you'd have to ionize every particle in your body to feel the effect and you'll probably die long before then..
Well.. Once we perfect our propulsion technology this problem simply goes away - you could just travel in a constant one g acceleration and get a nice steady constant artificial gravity.
With acceleration like that you can even travel to nearby stars in matter of years, although time will un faster and advance faster on Earth...
Of course this kind of acceleration is HUGE, if you consider that you should maintain it constantly and we have nothing even close to something like this that could be maintained in many years.
Btw. at half trip you turn your spaceship around and brake with constant 1g deceleration.
if we build suits that they have magnetic material lines all in perfect shape(more at head and upper body and less at lower body and feet) so activating a series of pretty powerfull magnets that are inside the floor make us feel gravity,these magnetic materials can be pure iron,cobalt or nickel so the magnets not have to be extremly powerfull and also less powerfull means less problems for the battaries and plumbing(nickel hydride and stainless steel).
Just gonna go microwave myself. Brb
i know this is 2 years ago but plz dont
So the answer is: we're just not smart enough yet.
No, it's, we don't have enough money. If scientists didn't have to worry about money, we would have allready visted alpha centauri by now.
carschmn We're as smart today as we were back in the times of Rome, we just have more scientific knowledge.
Major Missile we have enough money. When investing in space money doesn't just disappear, it is reintroduced to the global system. Money can't be made or destroyed, it just transforms from one form to another.
+Major Missile Hmm I'm not sure if the fact is us not having money, or improper allocation of said funds.
That bit about being tethered to another craft gave me an idea (which someone else has probably had before me). Instead of making a full disc or ring, why not make a smaller craft tethered to a counter weight? Increasing the tether length increases the diameter of the spin without drastically increasing the amount of material needed to build it (vs a ring space station).
The simple solution is to have two or more habitat modules connected to each other spinning around a common center. The connectors could be simple cables made of carbon nanotubes. The point is the modules could be common center at a large enough distance that a reasonable downward force is felt while coriolis effect is minimized at minimum cost. Primary and steering thrust can be provided by a suitable module at the center.
Connecting two spacecraft by a long cable is so cheap ... why don't we make a large station with that concept?
Because I doubt we have a cable-like material powerful enough to hold that much force. Once we do though, it'll make space elevators a possibility too!
Japsters714 Dude ... we make freakin cranes. Of course we have the cables.
+RedsBoneStuff you do know cranes aren't enough to haul houses? And the ISS is much heavier than that. And even worse they are heavier since they'll be spinning
+Japsters714 Scientists even determined wires made out of carbon fibre aren't powerful enough to sustain the weight of a space elevator much less a massive space station. We need a stronger material than that. Chains and steel aren't enough.
Japsters714 Umm ... I wasn't talking about space elevators.
Artificial gravity is exactly as strong as gravity here on Earth. What else would make sense? We have evolved to live at 1g acceleration, so that is exactly the acceleration stations would have. So you need a cable which is capable of reliably lifting the entire station here on Earth. For example, the ISS weighs 419 tons. From a quick glance at Google, we have cranes capable of lifting over 2000 tons. I'm sure NASA could make something out of materials we have.
I believe the main problem is that we would need to make a whole new station. We already have the ISS, but it was not designed to handle any kind of acceleration. It would just break apart. So we need to start over.
I've got a treat for you: Babylon 5.
When travelling to distant locations you don't need centrifuges to simulate gravity. You can have your spaceship thrust at a constant acceleration and the "floor" would be made out of the spacecraft's rear walls. When stopping at the destination, there would be a deceleration at at the same rate either by retro-thrusting (then the "floor" would be the front walls) or by rotating the spacecraft (then, there would be a moment of low "gravity").
Obviously this limits a lot the range of distances that can be made with this kind of spaceship. It can't be so far of a destination that eventually light speed is reached. It can't either be so close that the spaceship doesn't have enough thrust distance or power to decelerate.
Maybe in the future we will be able to create tiny blackholes and use their gravity for propulsion in a towing arrangement. That technology could also be used to generate actual gravity.
Interesting episode.
tell that to BABYLON 5 !! lol
+Fraser Cain Hey Fraser! :)
+Fraser Cain Didnt they spin the station around too? Was there something else, i cant remember.
+ABW941 Yes, if I recall it was mentioned in one episode that the inner ring of it where the garden area was the ground was rotating at like 60mph or something like that.
I'm pretty sure the Orion spacecraft under development right now has a system for artificial gravity. The engine module separates from the crew module and is tethered by a cable. Then the whole thing spins.
Really, all of these problems and conflicts regarding space travel makes me want to explore it even more.
Allen Kongura it only really makes sense in interstellar flight, I think :(
Yea. But what always brightens me up is the amount of knowledge we humans still have yet to obtain and the universe around us to explore.
I love Sci show space, my 2 favorite things science and space
Very good
There's always the "skyscraper" style of space ship. Good example of this is in "The Expanse." The ship is basically stacked "vertically" with the engines being at the "bottom" then the ship accelerates at a constant 1G, simulating Earth gravity. When they near the destination they flip the ship on its axis and decelerate at 1G.
I would think that a small spinning section would be useful not just for exercising, but also sleeping in. Sleep is a big chunk of the day, and since it's spent not moving so that you can't get dizzy, it would be a great time to subject the body to the force that keeps it from wasting away.
Riding on top of a rocket to space: a wild ride
Riding on top of a rocket in a spinning capsule: a wild ride to a whole new level
Actually the reason for building up space stations is the weightlessness. The weightlessness is needed for experiments that cannot be performed in the interference of the gravity.
Only on long manned journeys through space, an artificial gravity is needed in order to prevent permanent damage of the human body. In that case, there's the option of a constant acceleration of the spaceship by 9.8 m/s^2. Then the travellers experience the same force as on Earth.
There is one other way we know of: accelerate at a constant 9.8 m/s with the deck oriented so the thrust generates the apparent gravity downwards. Unfortunately, constant acceleration is hard to achieve and highly fuel-inefficient for chemical rockets and current electric propulsion systems can't generate enough thrust to do so for a reasonably-sized craft.
What if you had small segments of a a giant ring that were connected to a centrifuge by pipes? You can have the effects of a giant ring but only have to create a small part of it. Also even centrifuges that cause distortions in gravity between your head and your feet could be useful to heal the effects of microgravity whilst sleeping.
A Torus (type) shaped ship would be incredibly difficult to keep balanced as it doesn't have an axle, so no mass could be moved around inside it unless an opposing mass was moved to stop it from oscillating.
Even a disc with an axle attached to a greater mass of ship would make it wobble if not balanced. Car wheels have weights added to avoid vibration. I imagine being in the counterweight ship with the same vibration, but in slow motion would be a nightmare.
0:47 "As the ride spins centripetal forces are constantly pushing the wall toward you. They're making you turn instead of just zoom off in a strait line."
This description is incorrect. The walls are not *being* pushed by centripetal forces. They're *doing* the pushing on your body, imparting a centripetal force.
well, I would've also said that the artificial gravity in those movies/tv shows are just easy ways to explain why they're standing, since they're filming on earth
but more to the realistic point: I imagine if one were to make a disk much larger than that, a majority of the problems you mentioned would be significantly mitigated, but, again, the cost would be a LOT higher, and that's not including the development cost of the tech
Would the effects be the same or worse if you walked on the out side of the centrifuge ..not out in space but if you was walking on top of the spinning vessel. and would it improve plant life if the geo force was strong but the taller the plant gets It experiences less gravity?
+eio clementi If you walked on the outside you'd be thrown off of the spacecraft. I like your second thought quite a lot though.
A thought/question regarding a 100m radius spinning station:
- What would be the maximum delta in gravity between head & feet that we can tolerate easily/for a long time?
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For the100m radius station, your feet feel 9.8 m/s^2 (or, 9.7969) , and your head would feel ~9.63 m/s^2 (assuming a 1.7 meter height) (at 100m, you need a rotational velocity of 31.3 m/s, which means your head would be going ~30.8 m/s with 9.63 m/s^2. That's only a delta of 1.7%.
Can you make a video about Kepler 10c? Thanks!
Maybe they could use an isolated singularity at the center of the space ship with enough mass to equal 1 g, then spinning wouldn't be necessary. Although the down side, I would assume, would be the attraction of other objects in space. But if you could limit the range of the gravitational pull, then it wouldn't be a problem.
It seems to me that a space station/ship could have a small ring that spins really fast to simulate full gravity, but it's only used by the astronauts to sleep in. If they slept flat against the outer wall of the ring, there wouldn't be a significant radial delta between head and feet. It might mean that they wouldn't have to exorcise as much during their wakeful hours.
One suggestion I remember reading for long range flights is constant acceleration. Say going to Mars, we could accelerate at roughly 10 mps until you got halfway there, and then turn the ship backwards and decelerate at the same rate the rest of the way.
The main problem with this idea is the amount of fuel it would take. plus it would involve very difficult calculations.
Hay I have a question that I couldn't find anything on I was wondering if space is mostly a vacuum than could a wheel or something of the sort spin forever because it would have extremely small amounts of gravity or mater to slow it down if this is true than why don't we use it to power generators or something of the sort on like a space station... Just a question and btw I love your videos
gabriel Heskett As the wheel spins, the friction created at the center slows it down. Notice how if you use a hand crank on a flashlight or something similar, you have to apply pressure to spin it? objects in space spin indefinately (like earth), but if they have to apply force, they slow down.
+linksfood okay thanks. What if we used like really good bearings to minimize the friction and then we used say half of the power generated from the generator to keep the wheel spinning.
gabriel Heskett As long as it's touching, it'll experience some friction. So better bearings would spin longer, but still stop.There's also a law of thermodynamics that says that the power you generate cannot be greater than the power you put into it, so half of the wheel's power would not be enough to keep it spinning.
I think that there are some funny things to note. If you would walk in the direction the disc spins, you would experience more greavitational force and less if you'd walk in the opposing direction. So if a train would go as fast as the disc spins, for the people in the train the gravity would either be zero or 2 x 9.81m/s^2. That would also mean that if you'd jump out of the train that goes in the opposite direction the disc does, you could fly relative to the disc's ground. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I am reminded of Ringworld. A ribbon at the right distance from the local sun with an inner ring of sunshades to give day/night (noon or midnight only, but 24 hour cycle). Ringworld is rotating at just the right speed to match our gravity.
It would take all the material in the solar system to build such a ring so it is a way off.
It doesn't have to be a ring. A simple dumbbell is plenty enough. Just make the entire spacecraft/station split into two halves with equal masses. Have them reel out a cable between them, until the desired radius is reached. Obviously, the two sections would have to be set spinning around their barycenter by some kind of synchronized thrusters. Perhaps a pressurized, flexible tunnel along the cable could be used for movement between the two sections. One could be a habitation module, and the other a storage and machinery module. Some kind of "umbilical" for electrical power, data transfer and such would also be needed. If the station needs a "weightless" environment, then a module at the barycenter would do the job.
I heard on the radio over here that they're actually building a 300m in diameter spinning gravity simulator for experimentation to see what will happen with the human body when having to live in there for a prolonged period. It'll be a chain of 'pods' in a big circle that people will live in for half a year. They were asking for volunteers.
Artificial gravity is actually centrifugal force if you think about it.
It's your inertia that is "forcing" (even though centrifugal force is
not a true force and is only a result of inertia) you into the walls of
the spinning ship, simulating gravity. The force pushing up on your
feet, counteracting the centrifugal force, is the centripetal force, but
that is pushing up from the floor which is the exact opposite of
gravity, that pulls you into the floor. The centripetal force's analogy
on the surface of the earth would be the electromagnetic repulsion from
the electrons in the solid earth that prevents gravity (the centrifugal
force's worldly analogy) from pulling you all the way to the earth's
core.
And all I could think of was "Rendezvous with Rama" throughout this vid.
Actually, the 100m is from an early study and was only applicable if you really wanted a crazy high limit where absolutely everyone could live with no adaptation. Later centrifuge studies showed that going down to 10m or less was perfectly liveable for most test subjects after some acclimation. The Skylab astronauts exercised by running along the inside of the 10m diameter hull of the station.
This guy is a riot!!! I wonder if he does parties. :)
The 200m ring is to alleviate those effects. It is the size at which the adverse effects become negligible. Artificial gravity works fine on smaller centrifuges, and even the disorientating motion sickness effects go away with time.
Nasa has done many studies on the topic, actually.
I wonder if you could do a Video entirely about the ISS. Like, explaining what do the astronauts really do there, how long they stay, what are their daily lives like, those kind of things.
For reducing in tidal forces, most recommend a structure over a kilometer in size...which is super impracticable. There is some real need to understand what the lower limit of gravity we can stand with no negative side effects.
Christopher Willis - I have an idea: move an asteroid of the right shape and composition into a stable earth orbit, then use robots to mine it and produce a liveable interior with a solid exterior :D
sinephase A plan that involves asteroids and robots is always a great plan, or the beginning of the end!
What about continuous acceleration space ships? Like using ion thrusters on one side half of the trip and on the other side on the other half. I think the only drawback would be the necessity to have a large amount of power available, what calls for nuclear reactors inside the ship, instead of only solar panels.
A) your head would feel 98% of the gravity, a barely noticeable difference
B) space flight isn't supposed to be comfortable
C) your heart is working harder is space so the spinning space station is actually better, and similarly in your inner ear you are super disoriented, so the coriolis effect(I don't know if I spelt that right) is not too bad
I think this thethering thing is a.... thing! You could have IG and redundancy in one. Like, if something wold happened with one craft, crew from it could EVA to another and use it as escape vessel. You can add storage module in rotation center and connect it with crew modules with some pipe transport system, so you wouldnt need to compensate for uneven loading of crew modules.
Get Tony Stark to design and build a gravity engine. Boom, problem solved.
3:08 I recall from a documentary about going to Mars of having an exercise machine like this, and I thought it would be smart to first use something like it on the ISS. So, I'm happy to know someone had a similar idea. But, you should have mentioned that these would only work in pairs: one going clock-wise and the other going in the other direction, otherwise the _entire_ Space Station would rotate in the other direction.
I never have to wait through the entire scishow intro to find out who is (or, more-so, who is NOT) hosting the video simply by looking at the ratio of likes vs dislikes. I'm just gonna let that fact sink in for a moment.... Yeeeeeaah.
What about a setup like the MCRN Donnager in "The Expanse"? Keeping the ship in a state of constant acceleration to create G-Force that would simulate gravity for the crew.
Only major problem I see with such a setup is fuel consumption. But maybe I'm missing something and there would be other problems?
+Alicia Allan Well the most obvious problem there even assuming that you have infinite fuel that by some magical means didn't have infinite mass you would still eventually need to find a way to go FTL to sustain it indefinitely. At 1g you run into the speed of light in approximately 1 year around 30,612,244 seconds to be exact where a year is approx 31.5 million seconds of course you don't actually hit the speed of light since anything with mass has infinite mass (this is the whole issue with relativistic mass now hitting it's extreme conclusion as you approach the speed of light) and requires infinite energy to accelerate by this point.
+Seraphina S ah ja, I admit I had wondered about how much you can use acceleration before you would hypothetically approach the speed of light and thus couldn't accelerate any longer... hmm it's an interesting idea but ja seems there's no perfect way to "fake" gravity in spacecraft, at least with current or foreseeable technology...
Thanks for the answer 😊
Short of some unbelievably high mass density fuel like a matter antimatter reactor or something the mass of fuel you would need to send up to reach this would probably be more than the mass needed to build a ring on the order of a few km in diameter where the issues with rotation stop being a major problem. Or at least certainly would probably be more fuel mass than the mass of the machinery necessary to gather and refine the rest of the needed materials from any of the millions of sufficiently large asteroids of suitable compositions.
Is it possible to use something like the magnetic boots or "gravity boots" seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country?
Very possible. But the bodily organs and fluids would still be weightless.