Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Spinning space station design
DSL:
Carl-E,
Sounds like a question of which effect overpowers the other: Circular motion spinward or antispinward vs. the other vectors you describe.
Now what we need to do is to build a spinning torus space station and move up there to test that. Who's with me?
Skewbrow:
Re spinward/antispinward jogging. I though about it a bit, when we first discussed spinning space station a while back, and Akima explained how the Coriolis force places a limit to the size of the station (too large Coriolis => crew resorting to barfbags). Carl-E is, of course correct in that the centripetal force is the same. However, the Coriolis force is also there unless your motion is parallel to the axis of the spin. And (barring a mistake in me mentally calculating the direction of the relevant vector cross product) the Coriolis effect will fulfill DSL's prediction: if you jog spinwise the Coriolis force will also be pressing you out into the floor, so your muscles have to work harder to lift your feet/legs. Similarly if you jog antispinward, the Coriolis force will be in your favor.
Mind you, I'm fairly sure that Carl-E's argument is the same thing viewed a bit differently. There are many (equivalent) ways of looking at it.
Edit: That was probably written the right way on my first attempt :-)
Sidhekin:
Fun with physics: http://freefall.purrsia.com/zu/ffskates.gif
From http://freefall.purrsia.com/zu.htm – credit is important, right? – but I think hotlinking works for this image.
jwhouk:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 10 Feb 2012, 10:01 ---DSL, re: the running question.
What a fascinating thought! I think, though, that the effect doesn't happen - the centripetal force exerted by the station holding you in when your foot touches the ground will be the same that moment regardless of the direction you were moving. However, the acceleration made when you push off is linear, and the motion of the station is circular, and so I think that the faster you go, the heavier you'll feel because of the added force from the greater accelleration in each step (F = ma).
--- End quote ---
That might be why Lt. Potter was out of breath from running to catch up to Marigold and company.
DSL:
Here's my thought:
You're standing on the "floor" of the torus as it's spinning. The point defined by you is moving in a circle. You experience a certain value of g.
Move spinward and you still describe the same circle, but faster than the station does. Your personal value of g is greater; you're heavier.
Move antispinward, you describe the same circle, but slower. You personal value of g is lower; you're lighter.
(This assumes you're not moving so fast to antispinward you cancel out the rotation, in which case you could, barring obstacles like bulkheads, missing MP3 players and pissed-off Air Force lieutenants, appear to float through the torus to antispinward from the point of view of someone standing on the torus floor.)
Coriolis effect, which if memory serves from my SF nerdier days depends on how fast you move through angles, would appear to diminish the larger the radius if the torus. There's a bit of old video somewhere from the early Soviet space program of the inside of a small room on the end of a centrifuge arm only a few meters radius but moving at speed to produce a comfortable fraction of g; the astronaut trainee inside throws a dart toward the outer wall and the dart describes a tight curve to strike a dartboard off to the trainee's side.
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