Subject:
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Re: Where's all that gravity coming from?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Wed, 7 Mar 2001 20:20:16 GMT
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Viewed:
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439 times
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In article <G9uEuL.Coq@lugnet.com>, Damraska <Damraska@Excite.com> wrote:
> If you plan to put this structure under thrust, you will need to account for
> it. If your compartments are all oriented with the floors facing outward
> into space, and you start thrusting along the axis of rotation, all your
> minifigs will get stuck to the walls. A boom will probably snap under the
> stress no matter how well you build it. Not good. When under thrust,
> either the compartments need to rotate down, the compartments must have
> redundant working spaces on one wall, or everyone needs to evacute to the
> spine (which contains redundant working spaces).
Redundancy sounds heavy-- but you don't need it. I don't think there's any
reason why the axis of rotation has to be the same as the direction of
thrust of the ship's engines. So you simply build the rotating assembly,
in this case compartment-on-a-stick-with counterweight so that it rotates
on an axis perpendicular to the thrust vector. Simply spin it down so it
points in the right direction for acceleration or deceleration.
Of course, that counterweight idea sounds heavy, too. So you build it so
it's two compartments on a stick, one of which can rotate at the end of
the stick, and it gets turned around on acceleration or deceleration.
> That's only the start of your problems. :) High Z particles will render
> all of your minifigs blithering idiots unless you include adequate shielding
...so is that why they've all got that silly smile on their faces...
> from stellar radiation sources. An asteroid between you and any nearby star
> should be sufficient. If you plan on moving through interstellar space at
> any significant velocity, you better push it in front of your ship, too.
Hm. I note we don't tend to build asteroids around our own current space
stations... Is this a proximity-to-earth-shields-us deal? Or do we just
build sufficient shielding into, say, ISS? Or is six months of exposure
insufficient for blithering? I would guess with the very small density of
stars running around that this is really only an issue early on (leaving a
star system) and late (arriving at one...)
> will end up with a lot of free hydrogen fuel (free in the sense that you did
> not need to accelerate it with your ship). If you use that hydrogen as fuel
This is where I was always wondering how a ramjet could work-- see, the
problem is that that hydrogen wasn't moving before, and once you've scooped
it up, it is now. Which means you had to spend energy somewhere to impart
that energy on the hydrogen, i.e, you decelerated some to make up for the
fact that you collected the hydrogen. Which, to me, means you may as well
have brought it with you from the start. The only weight you really save
is what it took to build the bigger hydrogen tanks.
And it'd _really_ suck to find out that the hydrogen gets thinner than
expected between stars...
> to make the ramjet work. Method two is Orion: you build your ship on top
> of a big metal plate and pump nuclear bombs behind your ship. As they
Ah. Nuclear bombs also emit lots o' radiation. Which means that this method
might be used to solve the stellar radiation problem, as well. The same
shield you use to protect you from one can protect you from another, and
elegantly enough, that shield is pointed the right direction-- after all, you
accelerate away from stars, and decelerate toward them.
Adding in slingshotting around other stars, on the other hand, will change
this problem... pointing the shield at the sun means you're now accelerating
in a direction your ship was not designed to accelerate in, and you now need
those redundant workstations, but in the upper left hand corner of the
ceiling... Perhaps we shouldn't slingshot...
> detonate, you get thrust (and lots of it). Method three, the solar sail, is
> probably the most workable--if you can come up with a material for the sail.
Something that, say, catches solar radiation? :) I'd guess that this
could also solve the stellar radiation problem, too. You'd need to know just
how much solar wind can be expected on the other end, though, and adjust
your sail size to compensate. It'd really suck to find out there was less
on the other end and shoot past your destination with your only means of
propulsion being designed to take you in what's now by definition the
wrong direction.
> There was also mention of using quantum black holes for gravity. That
> introduces a few problems too. First, a quantum black hole has the mass of
> a mountain or perhaps a large asteroid. How much gravity does a large
> asteroid generate? Not much. A quantum black hole doesn't generate any
> more (though the fact it is compressed to a point helps because you can get
> closer to it, so to speak). Second, a quantum black hole has the mass of a
> large mounatin or asteroid, and you have to move it with the rest of your
> ship. Third, you have to contain the thing or it will hit the floor, eat a
> little of it, and throw off a ton of really harmful radiation. This is
> doable, but you will have to haul along the equipment to build an
> electromagnetic containment bottle and it is heavy.
Or, perhaps, one could theorize that the current cutting-edge work going
on in Physics into trying to separate out subatomic particles from one
another might yield something. THe Higgs particle, IIRC, is one theorized
to have something to do with gravity/mass.
The trick here, of course, is to get the gravity without the mass.
I think I'm really glad I just stick 4x4x2 rocket cones on the back and use
studs for gravity.
-JDF
--
J.D. Forinash ,-.
foxtrot@cc.gatech.edu ( <
The more you learn, the better your luck gets. `-'
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Where's all that gravity coming from?
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| J.D. Forinash <foxtrot@cc.gatech.edu> wrote in message news:986560$3pl$1@y2...net.foo... (...) for (...) the (...) I considered and discarded that methodology, but upon reflection, I cannot think of a good reason why. It could work. The probability (...) (23 years ago, 8-Mar-01, to lugnet.space)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Where's all that gravity coming from?
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| As some people have already pointed out, you can rotate just about any structure for artificial gravity--a drum, a torus, a rectangular box, or a box at the end of a boom (with suitable counterweight). The problem with this methodology is the amount (...) (23 years ago, 7-Mar-01, to lugnet.space)
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