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?

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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    11 hours ago

    “point in this direction and fire the engines” becomes a pain because, say you’re constantly rolling, and you need to change the direction your long axis points. What thrusters do you fire in what combination to steer the ship? Or do you stop the roll, maneuver/use your telescope/dock/whatever, then start rolling again? So now you’ve got to deal with gravity starting and stopping variously throughout the journey.

    according to the hohmann transfer orbit

    you only do one burst at the beginning of the journey, then drift for 6 months before entering the atmosphere of the target planet to slow down.

    So there’s 6 months where you don’t need to fire any engine. My plan is to first do the acceleration burn, then install solar panels on the outside of the ship (attach them via some kind of cord and cable) they fly outward due to centrifugal force so they get constant sun exposure, and then put the ship into rotation. So you don’t need to do any work on the outside anymore, until you’re shortly before landing, then you stop rotation, get in the solar panels, enter the atmosphere, do landing burn, and land.

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      7 hours ago

      Humans have flown a total of ten manned missions that involved a Hohmann transfer: Apollo 8, Apollo 10-17, and Artemis 2. All ten flew to the Moon. On a typical Apollo mission, the outward bound coast leg is about 72 hours, between TLI and LOI, during which time they had to do the release-turn around-dock-extract maneuver with the lunar module and do at least one course correction.

      We’ve been wasting tax payer dollars for more than half a century now designing and redesigning manned Mars missions that aren’t ever going to fly. Some of the various “artist’s conceptions” over the decades have included various centrifugal gravity solutions, be it the wagon wheel type or the bolas type or whatever. I don’t believe any actual hardware has even begun construction. Before you start worrying about that, you’ve got to 1. have a society healthy enough to fly manned deep space missions, and 2. figure out how to shield the crew from radiation first. Neither of which we have figured out at the moment.