If we wish to colonize another world, finding a planet with a gravitational field that humans can survive and thrive under will be crucial. If its gravity is too strong our blood will be pulled down into our legs, our bones might break, and we could even be pinned helplessly to the ground.
Finding the gravitational limit of the human body is something that's better done before we land on a massive new planet. Now, in a paper published on the pre-print server arXiv, three physicists, claim that the maximum gravitational field humans could survive long-term is four-and-a-half times the gravity on Earth.
Or, at least you could if you are an Icelandic strongman – and Game of Thrones monster – who can walk with more than half a metric ton on your back. For mere mortals, the researchers say, it would need to be a little weaker.
[...] For the maximum gravity at which we could take a step, the team turned to Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, an Icelandic strongman who once walked five steps with a 1430 pound log on his back, smashing a 1,000-year-old record[*].
[*] YouTube video.
What's the Maximum Gravity We Could Survive?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday September 22 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
I consider permanent space habitats which are mobile to be a lot more likely than sleep ships. I won't deny the possibility of sleep ships, but why?
When I say "space habitat", think of it as a mobile city, though mobile doesn't imply able to move very fast. I expect that 0.01g would be considered excessive. It's a place to live more than a vehicle. You need to keep moving so that you can get to new resources, but you don't want to move at a speed much different from drift because you don't want to deal with high speed meteors. This does assume nuclear power, and probably fusion, and it assumes a nearly closed ecology, and it assume a long-term stable society. The last is probably the most difficult, but with a government operated by an AI and good virtual reality to allow stresses to be eliminated it seems plausible. A lot of people may spend most of their life gaming, but why not. Reproduction would be strongly controlled except when the entire community decided to build a new city and the population forked into two cities. This would only happen when in contact with an exceptionally rich source of resources.
Note: A single habitat, even one the size of a city, probably doesn't contain enough expertise to maintain a civilization. But laser communication should be feasible. (Though maybe with an AI it could contain enough expertise.)
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(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday September 22 2018, @07:00PM
At that point it really becomes feasible to exploit resources that are easily accessible from zero-g, the asteroid belt for instance. And once sufficient capital is built up there, a sort of mega-HOME could be built, large enough to be pretty darn self-sufficient.
It would not go at a La Grange point, but into it's own solar orbit, and would be able to shift that orbit, even to escape it over time, if desired.
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