We all know the pictures of the astronauts on the ISS floating around. We also suspect that a lack of gravity is bad for the body as the muscles go weak and such.

Why don’t spaceships just rotate to cause the effect of artificial gravity through centrifugal forces?

  • Luminous5481 "Lawless Heathen" [they/them]@anarchist.nexusEnglish
    61·
    16 hours ago

    You said force of rotation but the chart is talking about RPM.

    yes, you have forgotten to take into account the Coriolis force and the effect it would have on your astronauts.

    https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070001008/downloads/20070001008.pdf

    At body motions or centrifuge rotation rates that are small in magnitude, the effects of the Coriolis force are negligible, as on Earth. However, in a centrifuge rotating at several rpm, there can be disconcerting effects. Simple movements become complex and eye-head movements can be altered: turning the head can make stationary objects appear to rotate and continue to move once the head has stopped. This is because Coriolis forces also create cross-coupled angular accelerations in the semicircular canals of the inner ear (see Figure 4-01) when the head is turned out of the plane of rotation. Consequently, motion sickness can result even at low rotation rates (<3 rpm), although people can eventually adapt to higher rates after incremented, prolonged exposure (see Chapter 3, Section 3.1).

    in other words, the higher the RPM needed to generate 1g, the worse the effect of the Coriolis force on the astronauts.