There appear to be competing ideas on how Asgardia will be set up as a space station. As a result, I am wanting to set up some clarification posts so that people can all have a more clear vision of what is reasonable, desirable, and safe for Asgardians.

This forum post will be dealing with the idea of gravity.

Needless to say, a station hurtling through space, orbiting the Earth, will not have gravity generated the way it is on Earth. There is always centrifugal force to generate a form of 'fake' gravity, but that opens up problems for folks with motion sickness who would be able to sense that they are in a moving object. I have been working on a station that uses these forces, but I am unfamiliar with the spinning that may cause motion sickness and how people may be affected by it. I, personally, do not suffer from motion sickness, although I also do not ride 'carnival rides' that are known for inflicting motion sickness.

The most popular of these consists of an O'Neill Cylinder. as a reference point.

Thus, I ask what people expect for an Asgardian space station. Will there be gravity? Where will it come from? Please vote above on your belief as to how gravity will affect life.

Thank you.

PLX

Dirk, I am trying to imagine the setup you are describing and cannot paint a mental image. Can you explain further, please?

LAG

Not to mention you would never get close to a fridge again.

Magnetic pull seems somewhat inapropiate for any live being in general. A lifetime exposed to magnetism must cause a side effect

So, rotational gravity poses structural problems to the habitat which will try doing it.
Magnetic para-gravity will pose health problems to the ones will try using it.
What it remains? elastic strings bound to body joints, to force us to use our muscles? elastic socks to help blood pressure? glue for the other objects?

Who said rotational gravity poses structural problems?

QLL

Hello Everyone,

I think Dirk is on part of the right track, there really aren't to many "significate" risk with long term magnets on the body. Saying that, simple magnetic boots can be used on walkways or areas of the ship, like we use sidewalks. It would be easy to build and simple. The boots would also be accompanied with a "Earth Suit", which would send vibrations to the muscles we would normally use in everyday day life on Earth so that the feel of gravity would not affect our bodies. 

Klnk, I am thinking that you are thinking that magnets work a way in which they do not.

The problem with weightlessness is not floating away from surfaces, which is what magnets would help with. The problem with weightlessness is the loss of stress of the bones, causing them to weaken. 

When the body doesn't use something, it starts to 'strip it for parts', as it were, to use that energy elsewhere. In a zero-gravity environment, we do not require our bones to be as hard because there is no pressure keeping us upright, so the resources used to keep them strong would be shuttled elsewhere by the body. This results in loss of bone mass, and more fragile bones. This is why fish and other sea animals have very little bone structure for their size, because they don't need it.

JGW

The boots would also be accompanied with a "Earth Suit", which would  send vibrations to the muscles we would normally use in everyday day  life on Earth so that the feel of gravity would not affect our bodies.

While it is true that muscle tissues react to vibrations at specific frequencies (and, also for the record, getting those frequencies wrong can result in death) which can be used to keep them tight, the problem is not MUSCLE TISSUE, it is BONE TISSUE.

There are also separate frequencies that do the same for bone (I have studied bioacoustics) you are talking about walking around in space constantly wearing a vibrating suit. That wouldn't be comfortable, and if something shifts the frequencies it can be deadly. It is not suitable for long-term habitation.

VIR

I thought it was radiation that is breaking down the bones??...which is also an easy fix.

-----EN-----

Somewhere on the Internet, the question is whether gravity is a force or a wave. Cool if gravity was a wave, because in this case we could shape it as we like it. For example, we can generate electromagnetic waves, but also to shield what would have been the effect of the emergence or suppression of gravity in a particular place and time.

-----PL-----

Gdzieś w Internecie padło pytanie czy grawitacja to siła czy fala. Fajnie, gdyby grawitacja była falą, bo w tym wypadku mogli byśmy ją kształtować jak nam się podoba. Przykładowo falę elektromagnetyczną potrafimy wywołać, ale i ekranować co było by efektem pojawienia się lub zniwelowania grawitacji w konkretnym miejscu i czasie.

You might want to check this out and read his work: http://www.twhall.com/ an expert in the field of artificial gravity and architecture.

That is a bio.

NZX

The last time I researched the issue of spinning to produce artificial gravity some 10 years ago, the coriolis effect was found to be minimal at 4 RPM or less. This can be achieved with a toroidal radius of a mere 75 feet, and the larger the toriod, the slower it can spin. Although this seems large by todays space designs, many envision craft far larger, and it can start with 2 pods at either end of the rotation and be built in extensions as a T until a ring is completed. For a picture of this, you can reference the space station on 2001: a space odyessy, where a 2nd set of the dual ring is in partial construction.

As far as spinning it up, I would propose 2 single toroids on the same axis that can spin in opposite directions, and thereby push against each others rest mass to spin up. I haven't made a small test mock-up to understand the effects of 2 gyros tied together in this way, and, there is the issue of an airlock from one to the other, since they are rotating opposite of each other.

I believe there is an other major unsolved issue with a spinning space station. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think we currently don't have any material that can sustain the necessary traction force that would be applied to the structure by the centripetal force generated by the spinning.

This would be an issue unless the spinning parts are extremely light, which is obviously not compatible with a 100,000+ passengers space station.