In article ,
(Zoltan Szakaly) wrote:

The health consequences could be avoided by putting a load on the
body, for example using bunge cords to pull the shoulders to the feet.
This is similar to the treadmill they have that they run on.

This won't put a load on your circulatory system though. I don't know
how much of a problem that would be if bone loss is somehow avoided.


To really reproduce gravity and to perfectly match earth conditions
you need a spinning habitat. This can be cheaply and easily done I
don't know why this is an issue at all. The ship has to have a
cylindrical habitat and this cylinder has to spin. The people on the
inside surface can enjoy almost real gravity.

It doesn't even have to be a cylinder rotating on its axis. It could be
two sections linked with a bridge, spinning end over end. This would
give you a wider "radius", meaning lower rotation and less coriolis
effects. However, it'd kind of screw up low-gravity research, and would
make less efficient use of available space, and require more material to
be launched. You could just put living areas in a separate rotating
section, but that's a lot more complex. With current technology, the two
parts would probably have to be physically separate. Experiments would
have to be done by remote (which could largely be done from ground), or
the astronauts would "commute".

A better solution: two complete stations, one with rotation gravity, one
exclusively for low-g experiments. Crew would rotate between them
periodically, say every two weeks. Pretty far-fetched, considering how
we are doing with just one station.

This reminds me of a book I read...I think it was Imperial Earth. Part
of it covered a trip from Titan to Earth. As I recall, the ship was
under constant acceleration, but not enough to prevent bone loss, and
the main character had to build up endurance so he could function on
Earth. The ship featured a ring around its circumference, and a common
exercise was to run or ride a bicycle around this ring. One would start
out slow, with "up" being the direction the ship was accelerating, but
as one gained speed, apparent gravity would increase and point outward,
perpendicular to the axis of the ring.

--
Christopher James Huff
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
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