Artificial Gravity on Mars?

[Sisyphus]

I'm not sure whether it would work.

 

If it's like a ferris wheel with slopped floors, I can't think of a situation where the sideways force would be able to balance against the downwards force to allow for a force just in the direction of your floor.

 

Ferris wheels are vertically aligned. Surely this would be horizontally aligned.

[Klaynos]

Ferris wheels are vertically aligned. Surely this would be horizontally aligned.

 

Sorry, yes, that is what I meant and was thinking, it still doesn't work though.

[michel123456]

I suppose he is thinking about a cone due to vector composition. Actual gravity from Mars is acting verticaly, the wheel is acting horizontaly, the result is at oblique angle. Making the floor perpendicular to the resultant vector results in a conic surface: a floor that is not plane, but curved.

[Airbrush]

Think of a car going around a race track that is banked inward. The driver will feel one G vertically, plus some G's (or fraction of G) at an angle to vertical.

 

Or think of a merri-go-round at the park. Instead of a flat horizontal floor, the floor of the merri-go-round is banked inward at a slight angle. The idea is to increase the low G forces on the Moon or Mars, in such a way that the people inside it will not notice anything other than Earth-like one G gravity, at an angle from vertical, so that to them gravity seems to be downward only. The floor would only be curved around the perimeter, but a vector from the central axel outward would not be curved, but flat like the banked race track.

Edited April 28, 2010 by Airbrush

[insane_alien]

Klay, what you have is a chamber on the ed of the boom that can rotate freely. so whe you spi eough that the combined force of gravity and centripetal acceleration equal 1 g the floor would appear to those inside to be level but to anyone outside it'll be at an angle.

[Airbrush]

Exactly Mr. Alien. Except the crew quarters need not be limited to a chamber at the end of a boom, but the entire outer ring. Like in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, remember how Dave was jogging along the inner side of the ring?

Edited April 28, 2010 by Airbrush

[insane_alien]

thats fine in space, but when you are operating on a planetary surface it becomes more difficult especially during spin up and spin down.

[Airbrush]

By spin up and spin down do you mean stopping the merri-go-round so people can get on, and then spin up to one G? You already explained it better than I could:

 

IA: "...when you spin eough...the combined force of gravity and centripetal [or centrifugal] acceleration equal 1 g... the floor would appear to those inside to be level but to anyone outside it'll be at an angle."

 

I think the merri-go-round can spin at constant rate. It would be underground. You enter down an elevator (or stairs) to the base of the structure. Then you proceed out to the crew cabin ring on the outer edge. As you proceed outward the g forces increase.

[Mr Skeptic]

By spin up and spin down do you mean stopping the merri-go-round so people can get on, and then spin up to one G?

 

He means that on a planet, you'd have to have your stuff bolted to the floor, and construct your habitat out of material with compressive as well as tensile strength. Otherwise, on spin-down the habitat is no longer kept off the ground by centrifugal force, the direction of "down" changes and all your stuff falls, your habitat gets crushed, etc.

 

It would be unnecessary and wasteful to stop the spinning just to move in/out of the habitat. Such motion should be done at the center, where the angular velocity vanishes to zero, essentially a very very slow merry-go-round.

[michel123456]

I suppose in such a configuration acceleration caused by rotation changes when people goes left & right instead of jogging al around, because the distance to the center of rotation changes when you go walk up & down the surface of the cone. To avoid this effect to be perceptible, you'll need a very large diameter and a narrow surface.

[Airbrush]

I appreciate the advice. I wish I had a scanner so I could post a drawing of the Moon Station.

 

Exactly Mr. Skeptic, a very slow merry-go-round. You enter and exit at the center. Crew quarters are around the perimeter, and the floor is banked inward like a race track.

Edited April 28, 2010 by Airbrush

[michel123456]

That is not exactly a cone. A race track is not a cone either. The bank is a curve.

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

 

 

A flying saucer...

Edited April 29, 2010 by michel123456
Consecutive posts merged.

[Airbrush]

OK then, not a cone, maybe a curve as you propose. Is a banked race track a curved bank? I think the floor can be perfectly flat from the center out, and obviously a curve along the circle. Anyone else want to vote on whether race tracks are a curved or flat bank?

[Janus]

A few numbers:

 

To produce a 1g acceleration, your centripetal acceleration would have to be 9.07 m/s, this equals a bank of just a little under 68° from the horizontal.

 

For a track with a radius of 100m, you get a speed of 30 m/s or 21sec per revolution.

 

If the track is 10m wide, then the inner edge will have to be angled at 67.32° to keep the force normal to the floor, and that normal force will be reduce to .977g. The outer edge will have a steeper bank and a higher normal force.

[PaulS1950]

The larger the diameter the flatter the floor could be if you kept the "living" width the same.

With a 100 meter radius and a "room width" of say 5 meters you could get away with a flat floor without the difference being noticeable to the occupants. The inside hub could be used for storage, mechanicals and utilities with feeds to the habitat ring. The entrance and exits would have to be through the center access tunnel - being mindful of the rotation conflict between the turning wheel and the non-rotating hub center.