this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
333 points (99.1% liked)
science
20477 readers
864 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Maybe "2001 A Space Odyssey" had the right idea ... spinning a whole big station to produce 1G. (Arthur C. Clarke was part of the writing team.)
Discussion here sez it takes a radius of 224m at 2rpm: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/281/what-would-the-size-and-rotation-of-a-station-need-to-be-to-produce-1g-gravity-f
At this site you can play with the parameters: https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/
It frustrates me that nobody has attempted construction of a Coriolis station yet. They are so prolific throughout science fiction and theoretical scientific literature, and they have been prolific for ages.
Detractors of Coriolis stations will usually say that the scale required for the optimal 1G is not feasible, but the physics behind the idea are more or less sound.
We have the technology to build one, it’s just a matter of profitability. Nobody wants to burn their trillions on a moonshot.
The matierals science is actually the bigger hurdle than profitability - we'd need carbon nanotubes or similar to handle the tensile stress of a rotating structure that big, since conventional materials would literally tear themselves apart at the rotation speeds needed for 1g.