Martha Adams wrote:

Well, researchers are working on it. I can't speak for NASA, nor do I
think things are so simple our 'we' can include everyone. In the mean
time, Robert Zubrin answers this and very many other relevant
questions in his book, "The Case for Mars" (1996). There's lots of
good resources in cyberspace but I think Zubrin's book is the best
place for someone to start who wants to acquire the resources to do
something constructive as vs recycling old words.


There's a way to do it...you don't need the whole wheel, just something
spinning 400 feet or more from its center of rotation.
Which means you can hang the thing you want to have gravity on the end
of a 400 foot cable to the center of rotation with a counterweight of
some sort on the opposite side of it...which can be another crewed area
or something like a reactor.
My nuclear-thermal/ion propulsion spaceship idea (model he
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/gallery/pf_disc.htm )
....uses this by having the whole ship rotate around its center, where
the de-spun ion engines and low gravity areas are located. the crew
lives at the front end, and over 800 feet away are the nuclear power
plant and nuclear-thermal engines serving as a counterweight. The
de-spun ion engines and observation and communication gear are at the
center of rotation, sliding back and forth on tracks to keep then
centered as the center point of rotation changes due to loss of mass of
expendables at either end, or the secondary ships docking and undocking
as they explore the moons of Saturn.
Although it's never shown in "2001", the movie's Discovery* is
perfectly designed to do this also as you can see in the rotating scenes
in "2010" where they board the Discovery from the center communications
area.
I wonder if the original idea was to have it rotating in the movie, as
it would hearken back to the ape throwing the rotating bone into the air
at the beginning of the movie.

* Mine is called Discovery because NASA decided to name it after the one
in the movie and the Shuttle, the way they named the Shuttle Enterprise
after the one in Star Trek.

Pat