One solution might be artificial gravity — some way to create forces similar to Earth's gravity on a spaceship, akin to the giant rotating ring from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey."
"There's really no reason it couldn't happen," Torin Clark, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Live Science. "From a technical perspective, this is something that could happen in the very near future."
"[Artificial gravity] is one of those things — like all of a sudden, it's super popular, and then all of the scientists at NASA and everybody … have a lot of funding to understand how to actually implement this, and then it just dies," Ana Diaz Artiles, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University, told Live Science. "And then it comes back, and dies, and comes back. I've been going through a couple of these cycles in the time that I've been doing this."
"Everybody agrees it's a good thing to do. The problem is that we don't know how to implement it," Diaz Artiles said. "How much gravity do you need? How big does [the device] have to be? How long do you need it to be? And how long do you have to use this? Should we use continuous gravity or a short-radius centrifuge, something where you go in and out?"
"You have a relatively long radius, which means you don't have to spin very fast to create gravity," Diaz Artiles said. "But this is massive. You can't get all the parts up there in the same spacecraft — you need multiple spacecraft and to assemble everything. So, of course, you can see what a big endeavor this is."
Astronaut Sunita Williams, equipped with a bungee harness, exercises on the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station in 2006. (Image credit: NASA/Crew of Expedition 14, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Instead of allowing passengers to live in artificial gravity, this smaller device would be used in short daily sessions. "It's kind of like an exercise device," Diaz Artiles said. "In the ISS, you have a treadmill, you have this resistive exercise machine, so you go there for 30 minutes to do your exercise, and then you get out."
"But then you need something like an engine that is able to accelerate all the time," Diaz Artiles said. "And propulsion-wise, I think we're not there yet."
This is the effect that causes motion sickness, Clark said.
"If you very slowly, incrementally increase the spin rate … and do that not just over one session but over multiple sessions across multiple days, as far as we could tell, anyone can be made to incrementally acclimate to the rotating environment [of] up to 20 to 30 rotations per minute," Clark said.
Would artificial gravity prevent harmful effects on the body?
Studies of people on head-down tilt bed rest — the standard research method for simulating spaceflight deconditioning — have found that 30 minutes a day in a centrifuge did prevent some loss of muscle function.
Related mysteries
But these studies are expensive and time-consuming. "It's very difficult," Diaz Artiles said. "I think people are interested in this concept, but we just don't have a good answer."
"We know how to do this. As humans, we have done more difficult things," Diaz Artiles said. "We need the money, but we also need to better understand the need."
See how much you know about human exploration into space with our spaceflight quiz!
Hence then, the article about could we ever create artificial gravity on a spaceship was published today ( ) and is available on Live Science ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Could we ever create artificial gravity on a spaceship? )
Also on site :
- Ivanka Trump Shares Rare Family Photos From Her Grandmother’s 100th Birthday Celebration, With Special Wishes From These Unexpected Stars
- Pedro Pascal Was Surprised Tony Gilroy Made ‘Behemoth!’ “So Intimate And Healing”: “I Thought You Were Gonna Be Mean”
- Dolly Parton’s Nephew, Accused of ‘Terrorizing Conduct,’ Requests Delay in Restraining Order Fight to Find Lawyer