• Question: Would it be possible, to generate some kind of gravity, inside of a space ship, with like a spining section (Like Babloyon 5, if you have ever seen it)

    Asked by dawnofwarfan to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 13 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Babylon 5 is awesome!

      Creating gravity in space is important, because without it, astronauts don’t use their bones anough, and their bones can dissolve away, like in Wall-e!

      Centrifugal force, like what you get when you spin a cat around, helps to ‘pull’ things to the inside surface of the spaceship, making it seem like you have gravity. You could also try to create gravity by having something with a really big mass strapped to your spaceship, which creates gravity, or by making it with magnets. It all seems very sci fi, but it is really happening!

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      We see this idea quite a lot in science fiction TV programmes and films. I think than in theory it should work but I don’t think anyone has done it yet and it would probably be pretty difficult.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Yep, it’s really easy. Just expensive! You would have to build a section of a spaceship that was strong enough to withstand the forces you were creating while spinning really fast. You can calculate the speed and size of the ring you would need to create Earth gravity and it would either need to be really big or go really fast, both of which would take a lot of engineering.

      We have lots of these kind of thing on Earth, called centrifuges. Small ones are used to separate different densities of fluid (like extracting DNA) and big ones are used to test if equipment (or people) can withstand high G forces. In fact, there’s an exactly human sized one in the manned vehicle lab at MIT (a university in america) where they test to see if it might be possible to use in space.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      It has been tried a few times, the first time about 40 years ago with two never very successfully but it would work. There is a picture on Wikipedia,

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_11

      of two space craft tied together which they tried to spin so there would be gravity at the two ends.

      I do like Babylon 5 too, the physics is often accurate (apart from the “jump gates” and weapons 🙂 )

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