- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: Twinfire0
Posted by: scruss
Sure it might be our future kids or there kids or even there kids kids that get this thing in space, but shouldn't we start now? And if you think about it, it really isn't as hard as people make it sound. I mean, we know how to make gravity in space kind of! One way would be to make the entire space vehicle spin. Imagine a ball on a string: you can twirl it around and feel the string tugging on your arm. If you have a bucket of water on a string, you can twirl it around and if you twirl it around fast enough, the water stays in the bucket even if you spin it so it goes upside down during part of the swing. The same thing could be done in space: take two space vehicles and connect them on a tether and make them swing around each other to generate a sense of gravity. Theoretically, this is a very attractive idea; early tests with Gemini XI and XII showed that, while it was possible to generate microgravity (too weak for the astronauts to feel), stationkeeping of two tethered spacecrafts was very difficult. NASA has also flown a couple of shuttle missions attempting to deploy a tethered satellite. There were several goals with the tether system, but at least one was to work out how to deploy tethered systems in space. So in theory all we would have to do is to get the outer shell to spin at a high rate of speed, which it could spin on large ball bearings and wouldn't have to be powered by a huge force, just enough to get it started and then we can use a system of magnets such as they do on new roller coasters and rides, some of these rides can get up to 150 mph within seconds. Some trains have this as well. So once we get the outer ring moving we can engage the magnets so that they can pull it the rest of the way and keep it going. And then we could just have a hollow empty shell of a ring on the inside portion and fill it with dirt and rocks and what ever we want from a nearby planet.
This thing could be taken up in sections, such as the space station was. Sure there will be a lot more sections for a halo, it just takes time. But i really dont see why this wouldn't work. Im sure there are things i cant see that will impeded the progress but thats the same with many things people dont think could be done, humans always prevail.
Link to magnet use
Alright buddy, we all know that you can use centripital force to simulate gravity, but in space it would not be economical. Zero-G is a lot easier to deal with than gravity, so why spin a ring in the first place? Even then, you would need enormous amounts of fuel to keep it spinning, and even worse, the tension that the structure would feel would be beyond comprehension. If you have ever read Ringworld, you would know that simulating gravity on a structure like this would be impossible, because you would need a material the size of a human hair strong enough to withstand, oh, on the order of billions of tons of weight.
Also, it would take up millions of gigawatts of electricity to get a structure this massive to spin. So unless you just want a gaint, automated hula-hoop floating above the earth, you can take your ill-concieved notions somewhere else.
In other words, it ain't gonna happen, I'm afraid. This project just seems like a useless novelty that would cost trillions of dollars. Why don't we just build a thousand foot tall staue of the Incredible Hulk instead?
The material could be made of carbon nano tubes. They can resist about 20 times the max amount of weight that steel can and the size thing, their about as small as 0.000000000000000000001 of a period (.)
It would also help the electricity thing because they are also a superconductor.
You wouldn't need allot of fuel to keep it spinning because in space there isn't any friction and an object thats moving would take billions of years to slow down.
And the idea about the hulk statue is crap.
So im all for the idea and if their is the right backing and technology this a very realizable idea.
[Edited on 03.22.2007 2:00 PM PDT]