At Sun, 20 Feb 2011 11:46:32 EST Len Lekx wrote:


On Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:30:09 EST, "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal
to reply]" wrote:

If you have separate rotating and non-rotating sections (as in, for
example, the movie "2010"), then yes, you need a rotating air-seal
between them. This takes a bit of effort for the engineers, but is
certainly possible.

A bigger problem than the pressure seal would be the need to
transfer control signals and power through the moving section.

Transfering *power* to some sort of moving object is *really old tech.*
-- every rotating electrical device (motors, generators, alternators)
and *electric* subway and commuter trains, and trolly cars need to do
this all the time. Slip rings would work. Presumably, we are not
talking about a solid shaft (like a propeler), but a rotating tube.
Using something not unlike a circular trolly wire with a trolly wheel or
shoe would work. So would a contact shoe against a ring plate.


Although... given the advancements in wireless technology, that
isn't as big a problem now as it used to be.

Right. Control signals could just be encoded as wireless ethernet
packets. And anything critical could be handled by additional slip
rings, much as the power.

Plumbing would be interesting, but also doable -- just a different sort
of concentric rotating seals at the center of rotation.




--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 /
Deepwoods Software -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments