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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday July 07 2019, @04:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-so-merry-go-round dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow4463

Artificial gravity breaks free from science fiction

Artificial gravity has long been the stuff of science fiction. Picture the wheel-shaped ships from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Martian, imaginary craft that generate their own gravity by spinning around in space.

Now, a team from CU Boulder is working to make those out-there technologies a reality.

The researchers, led by aerospace engineer Torin Clark, can't mimic those Hollywood creations—yet. But they are imagining new ways to design revolving systems that might fit within a room of future space stations and even moon bases. Astronauts could crawl into these rooms for just a few hours a day to get their daily doses of gravity. Think spa treatments, but for the effects of weightlessness.

[...]"Astronauts experience bone loss, muscle loss, cardiovascular deconditioning and more in space. Today, there are a series of piecemeal countermeasures to overcome these issues," said Clark, an assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. "But artificial gravity is great because it can overcome all of them at once."

[...] In a series of recent studies, [they] set out to investigate whether queasiness is really the price of admission for artificial gravity. In other words, could astronauts train their bodies to tolerate the strain that comes from being spun around in circles like hamsters in a wheel?

The team began by recruiting a group of volunteers and tested them on the centrifuge across 10 sessions.

But unlike most earlier studies, the CU Boulder researchers took things slow. They first spun their subjects at just one rotation per minute, and only increased the speed once each recruit was no longer experiencing the cross-coupled illusion.

[...]The personalized approach worked. By the end of 10th session, the study subjects were all spinning comfortably, without feeling any illusion, at an average speed of about 17 rotations per minute. That's much faster than any previous research had been able to achieve. The group reported its results in June in the Journal of Vestibular Research.

Clark says that the study makes a strong case that artificial gravity could be a realistic option for the future of space travel.

"As far as we can tell, essentially anyone can adapt to this stimulus," he said.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @04:18PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 08 2019, @04:18PM (#864554)

    it seems silly to research artificial gravity for space travel.
    the reason is simple: distances are HUGE. we want to get there fast.
    thus research should be about better engines; more g's are better.
    i fear we will discover a drive that works most efficient when it itself is subjected to >10g. the problem we will
    face with that engine is less about travel time but how to effectivly shield our astronauts over longish periods of time from
    those "bone shattering" g forces generated by the engine?

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 09 2019, @12:03AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 09 2019, @12:03AM (#864775) Journal

    http://nathangeffen.webfactional.com/spacetravel/spacetravel.php [webfactional.com]

    I plugged in 10 light years for distance, 0.1g for acceleration. You get a maximum velocity of ~0.75c, ~22 years according to observer, ~19 years for traveler.

    A more modest 0.01g makes it 62 years for the traveler, at up to ~0.31c.

    While 10g would definitely speed things up for the traveler, 10 light years in 20 years is far from terrible, and is much closer to being achievable. If we can't get to 0.1g because we don't have antimatter, fusion, or whatever, then we can start thinking about slowing the traveler's metabolism or providing anti-aging therapies.

    If we can create a warp drive that bends space instead of accelerating, all bets are off.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]