Not too late for more Shuttle flights

Pat Flannery writes:
On 3/13/2010 9:43 AM, David Spain wrote:

They did that in the movie 2001 too, but only those in the know realized what
it was about. Too bad they didn't do the special effects to show what happens
when Bowman runs the OTHER* way... ;-)

....and before someone jumps down my throat, yes I know, I AM WRONG!
It was Poole, not Bowman, running around the centrifuge...

The centrifuge in the Discovery was supposed to generate 1/6 g (lunar gravity)
when the astronauts were at rest; I don't know how much higher you could get
that be running around in it like shown in the movie.
But even at 1/6 g the diameter was pretty small for this to work without
getting the astronauts dizzy as they moved around in it.

I'm guessing a bit but it looked to be about 40ft in diameter? Aha wikipedia
says 35.65 ft. (11.6m) at 3 RPM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One

Here's Pete Conrad running around the the inside circumfrance of the Skylab
station, ala' 2001: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awe6vOXURpY
As can be seen in this video, once the astronauts had been on Skylab long
enough, they were capable of doing pretty wild gymnastics without any space
sickness: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYsKGDJe4zE


*A very QUICK way to get from one point to another in the centrifuge. In a
less UP TIGHT version of 2001, there'd be all these hand painted signs hung up
by the crew saying ONE WAY --- pointing in the spinward direction....


Other than air circulation pushing you along, if you ran against the spin hard
enough to go weightless, you should just end up floating in the air above the
"floor".

Unless you do a few hops and jumps along with it. See above... ;-)

Babylon 5 had a scene in one episode where Sheridan ended up floating in the
weightless middle of the station after the central monorail car he was riding
in was blown up, and as was correctly pointed out in the episode the danger he
was in was what would happen when he floated into the rotating inside hull of
the station, which from his point of view would be going sideways at high
speed.

I'm losing my lunch already....

Dave

Pat Flannery wrote:

Babylon 5 had a scene in one episode where Sheridan ended up floating in
the weightless middle of the station after the central monorail car he
was riding in was blown up, and as was correctly pointed out in the
episode the danger he was in was what would happen when he floated into
the rotating inside hull of the station, which from his point of view
would be going sideways at high speed.

Actually, from Sheridan's point of view, he would remain "weightless"
all the way to the ground were it not for the wind.

It would be the atmosphere, rotating with the structure, which would
gradually accelerate sheridan tangentially to the ground and that would
cause him to drop in altitude, at which point the wind would get
stronger and his acceleration be greater towards the ground.


What I have not seen mentioned in any such movies is the effect of
humans routinely changing from g to 0g environments and back to some
level of g.

If, after having had dinner at the restaurant, you take the elevator to
the centre of the vehicle where it is 0g so you can catch the train to
the other side of the station, how will your stomach react ? And how
will it recat when you then take the elevator back to "ground" level
where the gravity will increase once again ?

Brian Gaff wrote:
If you think about it though, any centrifugal device needs to be balanced,
and how do you do that with people in it?
I suspect small scale devices containing animals is al one will see.


Shirley they thought about that when they designed the CAM ? Wouldn't
there have been some accelerometers that would control some
counterweight rotation to balance the module ?

Was the CAM originally designed to be attached to a far more massive
station where its effects would have been smaller (due to larger station
mass) and could have been mitigated by the CMGs ?