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LEO Space Station with Artificial Gravity (w/Discussion of effects on the human body)

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Eric Berger: Meet the space billionaire who is interested in something other than rockets

McCaleb's space habitation company, Vast, emerged publicly last fall with a plan to build space stations that featured artificial gravity. This was significant because NASA and most other space agencies around the world have devoted little time to developing systems for artificial gravity in space, which may be important for long-term human habitation due to the deleterious effects of microgravity experienced by astronauts on the International Space Station. Vast boasted three technical advisers who were major players in the success of SpaceX—Hans Koenigsmann, Will Heltsley, and Yang Li—but did not offer too much information about its plans.
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And there still isn’t much information but it’s fun to think about. I’ve been waiting over five decades now. It certainly won’t be this big, but it has to be at least several hundred meters in diameter.

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#2
Naïve question: when you start spinning like that at a decent angular velocity, won't people feel giddy and nauseous? or is that only a side effect due to gravity on earth and wont be seen up there with zero gravity?
 
#6
I still think that a much simpler and easier first implementation of artificial gravity would be to have two Starships tethered nose-to-nose with e.g. a 300m Xylon tether, attached to the load-bearing tower catch points, and spun around their mutual center of gravity. Constructing a huge rigid toroidal space station would be orders of magnitude more difficult. (Though ultimately extremely cool.) Sending spinning pairs of crewed Starships to Mars would also be a great way to get there without having to endure 6 months of zero-G.
 
#7
Young said:
For a rotating space station, to have gravity, period T = 2 * PI * sqrt( (radius in meters) / 9.8).
For radius 980 m, T is about 63 sec.
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I've heard that 3rpm (20s period) is generally considered to be the threshold at which the Coriolis force becomes long-term tolerable. (Though it may also depend on acceleration, and will have to be empirically tested.) 1G at 3rpm would require a 100m radius, equivalent to a 200m tether. But slower rotation would be more comfortable (and less dizzying) for sure!
 
#8
Electroman said:
Naïve question: when you start spinning like that at a decent angular velocity, won't people feel giddy and nauseous? or is that only a side effect due to gravity on earth and wont be seen up there with zero gravity?
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Generally, motion sickness is caused by a disconnect between what your eyes tell your brain about your motion vs what your inner ear is telling it (the various motion sensors in there). This is one reason VR headsets can cause nausea, or when you are on a boat and cannot see the horizon. Often, your brain adapts after a time, learning to accept the differences. (The theory, btw, is that many poisons can cause this disconnect between eyes and ears, and so the brains reaction is to assume you might have eaten something poisonous and get rid of it, which is the cause of the nausea.)
 
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#9
drtimhill said:
Generally, motion sickness is caused by a disconnect between what your eyes tell your brain about your motion vs what your inner ear is telling it (the various motion sensors in there). This is one reason VR headsets can cause nausea, or when you are on a boat and cannot see the horizon. Often, your brain adapts after a time, learning to accept the differences. (The theory, btw, is that many poisons can cause this disconnect between eyes and ears, and so the brains reaction is to assume you might have eaten something poisonous and get rid of it, which is the cause of the nausea.)
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Makes me wonder why they put windows in those test apparatus - it seemed to me that seeing the outside of the chamber flashing by would at least be distracting. Put up a painting, or a video of a landscape, if you need a view of the outdoors.
 
#10
adiggs said:
Makes me wonder why they put windows in those test apparatus - it seemed to me that seeing the outside of the chamber flashing by would at least be distracting. Put up a painting, or a video of a landscape, if you need a view of the outdoors.
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It's not the view that's important per se; it's the synchronization between the view and what your inner ear is telling you. If your inner ear is telling you that you're rotating, and what you're looking at is a non-rotating painting or landscape as you describe, that will induce nausea. On the other hand, strong enough motion will induce nausea pretty much no matter what you're looking at.
 
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#11
Ben W said:
I still think that a much simpler and easier first implementation of artificial gravity would be to have two Starships tethered nose-to-nose with e.g. a 300m Xylon tether, attached to the load-bearing tower catch points, and spun around their mutual center of gravity. Constructing a huge rigid toroidal space station would be orders of magnitude more difficult. (Though ultimately extremely cool.) Sending spinning pairs of crewed Starships to Mars would also be a great way to get there without having to endure 6 months of zero-G.
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I agree with starting simple. But note that the order of construction of a full station would start with the hub, then the spokes, then the outer ring. As long as you keep it balanced, any place between hub and full ring could be a viable place to pause (or cease) construction. A hub with two spokes is, more or less, what you described.

Obviously you're talking about basically using off-the shelf parts, though, which is of course much simpler. Whether that would be acceptable depends on what they need to support and prove with the initial thing.

It's refreshing to see somebody doing something different in space. It will be really interesting to see if their goal is tourism, or actually rent space to businesses.
 
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#15
TunaBug said:
I agree with starting simple. But note that the order of construction of a full station would start with the hub, then the spokes, then the outer ring. As long as you keep it balanced, any place between hub and full ring could be a viable place to pause (or cease) construction. A hub with two spokes is, more or less, what you described.

Obviously you're talking about basically using off-the shelf parts, though, which is of course much simpler. Whether that would be acceptable depends on what they need to support and prove with the initial thing.

It's refreshing to see somebody doing something different in space. It will be really interesting to see if their goal is tourism, or actually rent space to businesses.
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True, there is nothing showstoppingly difficult about constructing a toroidal spinning space station, but you won't get the artificial gravity until it's close to completion, and it involves a LOT of upmass and on-orbit assembly. Whereas mutually spinning Starships doesn't involve any on-orbit construction at all; just a mechanism to attach and deploy a tether. So it depends on the purpose of the mission. For a permanent LEO space hotel, the toroidal station is ultimately probably better. But for scientific experiments, or travel to Mars, spinning Starships would get us there with much less effort and be ready far sooner. (It will be many decades before a spinning toroidal Mars cycler would be feasible, I think.)

Spinning a Starship or tanker around a fuel depot (more slowly, and on a different axis) could also assist with propellant transfer, which would otherwise be difficult in zero-G.
 
#19
The problem with spinning a space station to create artificial gravity is that the "gravity" is stronger the farther out you are from the center of rotation. The smaller the radius, the greater the apparent difference in the "gravity" between your head and your feet. That can cause nausea. And since different people have different levels of sensitivity, a station big enough for one person might not be big enough for another. So you need to make the station very large. But that means putting a lot of metal into orbit, and doing a lot of construction in orbit.

OTOH, people who are very sensitive to motion sickness won't be able to tolerate the trip to space in the first place. I have found a place where gravity is just right for my body: The surface of the Earth. And I intend to stay here. To those of you who intend to go to Mars, I say: May you have a safe and fun trip. I will tip my hat to you in respect when you die in that godforsaken place.

At the bottom of the sea you are still just a few miles from life-giving air. In desolate Antarctica you still have Earth's atmosphere protecting you from cosmic rays and containing 21% oxygen, and properly bundled up you can go outside without a pressure suit or self-contained breathing apparatus. And the sand in the wilds of the Sahara is nowhere even remotely close to being as destructive, corrosive, or all-intruding, as the Martian dust.

I can think of no punishment worse or as inhumane as being sent to Mars.
 
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#20
daniel said:
I can think of no punishment worse or as inhumane as being sent to Mars.
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And yet there are clearly many people who want to go there. So, to each their own!

If I had the opportunity to make a trip to LEO and hang out in a rotating space station with artificial gravity I would gladly give up a significant fraction of my worldly assets to do so. Actually, I would happily spend a lot of money just to go to orbit for a few hours.
 
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