Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Spinning space station design
Deadlywonky:
People people calm down!
to bring some semblance of control (and you know carry on talking about actual stations) would a spinning design need to be perfectly balanced or is there just a level of tolerance(a la car wheel) to stop vibrations and tumbling?
Carl-E:
Balance is needed for something to spin on a fixed axis. Otherwise, when set to spinning, it will find its own center of mass and rotate about it. The problem with a car wheel that's out of balance is that the axis you want and the center of mass are different...
So no, the space station doesn't need to be balanced, but the wobble would mess with the g-force in different parts, depending on how severe it was.
Earin:
--- Quote from: Carl-E on 09 Feb 2012, 09:16 ---Balance is needed for something to spin on a fixed axis. Otherwise, when set to spinning, it will find its own center of mass and rotate about it. The problem with a car wheel that's out of balance is that the axis you want and the center of mass are different...
So no, the space station doesn't need to be balanced, but the wobble would mess with the g-force in different parts, depending on how severe it was.
--- End quote ---
So, if you had Sufficient reaction mass or reactionless thrust, could you avoid off-axis wobble by automatically exerting thrust on the opposite side to dynamic masses like people around the ring? (Like, say, with some sort of advanced AI controller...)
Also, is anyone else weirded out by how *big* Potter's room is?
Is it cold in here?:
Yes, it struck me as remarkable for military quarters.
"Applying thrust" gets expensive in short order.
Deadlywonky:
Earin, it looks like a bunk bed behind her (shades of Lister's room only clean) and there could be another pair on the other side (IMO 4 officer rooms are pretty common, especially where space is tight, think Nuclear Sub)
Carl-E so if you were building a ring that was spinning, say at 1 rpm and you were walking around it would the imbalance cause the ring to slow down, start spinning erratically or other undesirable behavior?
[edit] rather than thrusters a 'maglev' style counterbalance around the outer edge?[/edit]
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