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Ok, here's the kicker!

I spun heh this a bit further, and imagined an inflatable torus with the same surface area and thus weight.

With an inner radius of 30m you get a comfy diameter of ~2.5m. [1]

If we throw this into spincalc [2] and ask it to compute the rotation rate of such a station to get mars gravity levels of 0.376g. Then we get ~3.2 revolutions per minute, which is well within human comfort levels according to this study [3]. (4 is the max)

So yeah this would basically allow you to shoot up a retrofuturistic rotating space station with comfortable gravity levels for future martians in one shot. Wow!

[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=outer+radius+of+a+torus...

[2] http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/

[3] http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/artificial_gravity_and_th...




That is really cool. Outside of cool space stations, that could definitely be a useful addition for interplanetary spacecraft (like the spinning component of the Hermes from The Martian).


Yeah, but attaching two spacex interplanetary spaceships nose to nose via a tether and giving the pair spin with the maneuvering thrusters would probably give you a s*load more space with much more comfortable artificial gravity.

Still the scifi character of the ring is neat :D




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