Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas gas gas...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...ecome-airborne



--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

Greg D. Moore (Strider) wrote:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...ecome-airborne

I was born in an digestive hurricane,
and I howled out my mass in a driving rain,

But it's all right now, in fact it's only a gas.

;-)

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" skrev i
meddelelsen m...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...ecome-airborne

There was one approach to the problem that the straightdope people
neglected: variable gravity. In a microgravity environment, how much
acceleration could you get? This would also give you the maximum gravity -
on an asteroid, or near the axis of a spinning orbital structure - where
lift-off could be achieved.
The basic fart generates 0.2 Newtons? Getting the subject off the launch
pad in a one g environment requires 800 N? Then reducing gravity by a
factor of 4000 should do the trick. In microgravity you could achieve an
acceleration of two or three millimeters per square second, while the fart
lasted, and provided you could make the thrust vector pass through your
center of gravity. If an O'Neill type space habitat is 4000 meters in
radius, you can't stray more than a meter from the axis before you become
too heavy - except at these minute forces and accelerations, air circulation
from breezes or fans would likely dominate the fart rocket.
And if that is how you want to propel yourself, air circulation will be
needed anyway to maintain a civilized atmosphere, as it were. Even for
those who are used to the countryside when pig manure is being spread on the
fields. But if people begin to live in free-fall structures like O'Neill
type habitats, perhaps this concept could form the basis for a fraternity
beer-drinking competition. The best human rocket hopes to win the
admiration of the girls and can't understand why they derisively call him
"cabbage-head" before floating off to snog boys with clean underwear.
A Danish slang expression meaning "get lost" - "fis af" - translates into
English literally as "fart off". A new use for old slang then.

To take this subject somewhat beyond the silly, how well could you move
in a microgravity environment, away from solid objects such as walls, by
swimming in the air? Or by blowing hard?

Corvus.

On 5/20/2010 2:01 PM, Raven wrote:

To take this subject somewhat beyond the silly, how well could you move
in a microgravity environment, away from solid objects such as walls, by
swimming in the air? Or by blowing hard?

I think they actually tried the swimming concept on Skylab, though I
don't know with how much success.

Pat