Design for a Space Habitat With Artificial Gravity That Could Be Grown Larger Over Ti

[Peter1469]

Design for a Space Habitat With Artificial Gravity That Could Be Grown Larger Over Time to fit more people

The article seems to disfavor building on planets and moons in favor of habitats in space, but I would expect we will do both.

There are two main approaches that humanity can take to living in space. The one more commonly portrayed is of us colonizing other celestial bodies such as the Moon and Mars. That approach comes with some major disadvantages, including dealing with toxic soils, clingy dust, and gravity wells.

The alternative is to build our own habitats. These could be located anywhere in the solar system, could be of any size that material science allows, and have different characteristics, such as temperature, climate, gravity, and even lengths of day. Unfortunately, we are still a very long way from building anything like a fully sized habitat.

However, we are now one step closer to doing so with the release of a paper from a team at Texas A&M that describes a way to build an expandable space habitat of concentric cylinders that can house up to 8000 people.


Any habitat that houses that many people will have to deal with some major downsides of living in space. The paper’s authors’ explicitly list 5 that their space habitat design was trying to address:

1. 1 Gravity
2. 2 Radiation Protection
3. 3 Sustainable Agriculture
4. 4 Habitat Growth Capability
5. 5 Commercial Value

Read the rest of the article at the link.

[HawkTheSlayer]

My own DS9! Awesome.

But I hope that artificial gravity works better than artificial sweetener.

[CCitizen]

I frequently feel depressed.

One reason to feel depressed is that Generation Z will eventually see an amazing Space Civilization. At age 50 I doubt I will see that age.

Yet very interesting and very realistic -- but it will take time.

[Peter1469]

I frequently feel depressed.

One reason to feel depressed is that Generation Z will eventually see an amazing Space Civilization. At age 50 I doubt I will see that age.

Yet very interesting and very realistic -- but it will take time.

You will live to see the beginnings of it.

[CCitizen]

You will live to see the beginnings of it.

Thank you! Best hopes for you!

[carolina73]

So we are talking about Habitrails for humans.

I'm just wondering how long it would take to condition people for the motion sickness rather than limit it.
It doesn't take that long for people on a sailboat to get sea legs.
Race car drivers get used to speeds that would make people not used to it unbalanced.
People get used to living at high altitudes.

[Peter1469]

So we are talking about Habitrails for humans.

I'm just wondering how long it would take to condition people for the motion sickness rather than limit it.
It doesn't take that long for people on a sailboat to get sea legs.
Race car drivers get used to speeds that would make people not used to it unbalanced.
People get used to living at high altitudes.

We don’t have the technology (yet) to allow Captain Picard to stand on the bridge of the Enterprise like he was standing in an office building. However, we do have something that approximates artificial gravity: centrifugal force caused by rotation. This is a pretty common solution to providing astronauts with something equivalent to gravity. That solution hasn’t been tested, but most experts agree that it should alleviate most of the health problems associated with lack of gravity.

There are two major design considerations when making an artificial gravity system that would eliminate those health problems. First deals with the size of the habitat inducing the artificial gravity. If the radius of rotation is too small, there can be a significant difference in perceived gravity between a person’s head and their feet. This has been known to cause motion sickness, and would make any habitat that induced that effect in its occupants unusable.

The second consideration focuses on rotational speed. The authors point to a paper that points out that any rotational speed of more than 4 RPM would also induce motion sickness. Using the upper limit of rotational speed and the lower limit of radius of rotation yields a radius of 56 meters, about as tall as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A human could possibly live on such a habitat without the induced motion sickness of a carnival ride, and without the negative health impacts of constantly floating in zero-g.