3 Ways to Make Artificial Gravity in Space
We have the ISS. NASA and its Euro partner are starting on the Moon's Gateway project. What could make these environments easier and healthier to operate in? Gravity.
In space, weightlessness is inconvenient, to say the least. Your tools float around. It's harder to eat. It's a chore to use the toilet. Not to mention, there's all those pesky health problems that stack up over time – muscles atrophy, bones weaken, and eyesight worsens.
What could make a meaningful difference today is another method: centripetal force. This will likely be the first form of artificial gravity that humans widely deploy in space.The only way you'd be able to have artificial gravity, both to shield you from the effects of your ship's acceleration and to give you a constant pull "downward" without needing to accelerate it, is if somehow you discovered a type of negative gravitational mass.
There are experiments working to do this right now!