J'Dona

I'm investigating the mechanics behind rotating space stations for a science fiction piece that I'm writing, and I'm curious as to how some parts of it work and hope that maye someone here has links or an explanation of certain parts, or even just advice (like: stop writing fiction and get a real life, you nerd). I'm going to continue looking up on it after I've posted this anyway. I know a lot of people won't be interested by this or consider it irrelevant, but if people here learn something then surely that's a positive use for the forum? Nobody has to respond anyway; I'm getting ideas just from writing this. But the actual problems I have are vague and I'm really just feeling some uincertainty over the whole thing, so links would probably be the quickest and best way to sort this out.

I understand how the rotation of space stations can simulate gravity on a person, and I've been reading up on Coriolis forces (and this java applet has certainly helped there http://vislab.cs.wright.edu/~rbryll/CORIOLIS/Coriolis_Rob.html). But some other sources mention the need for a flywheel to conserve angular momentum, and I'm confused as to why that might be needed. I imagine this station having rotating and non rotating parts (rotating for habitation, non-rotating parts for easy cargo transfer and docking), and I don't know how a flywheel might come into this. Of course it's not necessary to have non-rotating parys, and probably easier to have the entire station rotating, and I assume that in space it would continue to rotate for ever in that case. The centre (or center...) of the station would still have almost zero gravity, which would make moving cargo easier, and not too difficult to dock with if it's not turning very quickly, though there would still be delays in cargo.

If this station were built some time around 2050-2075, when space planes would probably be very common and transport into space cheap, then we can assume that the station is able to be built very large with strong alloys and materials, using the rather large wealth that some countries are likely to have in the future. I know some of you (if you're read this far) are probably rolling your eyes because I'm inserting dubious clauses like that in now, citing future technology as a solutoin to my problems, but this isn't a practcal argument after all, only theoretical. With materials of a greater tensile strength and significant resources able to be cheaply put into space, this space station's radius could be large, maybe on the order of several hundred metres (or meters!). A radius of 500m would need to turn once every 44.9 seconds or so to simulate a gravity of 9.8 ms^-2. At 1000m it's still only 63.5 seconds. Incidentally a 1000m radius would give a circumferece of 6.28km, or about 3.9 miles. If the rotating section is, say 50m across (which isn't much), there would be a floor area of about a third of a km² on the bottom floor at least, which is enough to house a large population.

In case it is relevant, this station is supposed to be the major point of traffic between the Earth and mining colonies or cities on the Moon, and (in reference to the post about the Earth-Moon barycenter I made yesterday) would be built at the Lagrane 1 point, using thrusters to stabilise itself. Power is not a problem because at this point the Moon is being strip-mined for the helium-3 for fusion power (apparently another name for the helium-3 isotope is tralphium), and this station itself serves as the main hub of transfer of helium-3 to Earth.

Again, I'm sorry to post this science-fiction related... thing, but as I've mentioned before in the scifi forum thread, if I posted this on a science fiction forum I'd get a load of technobabble, and I'm looking for real science here. I feel like a fool for asking questions about such things without precise points I need answering, to sorry about that.

EDIT: Just so everyone knows why I posted this when I really don't have to, as such, it's because my goal over my gap year is to produce one piece of writing every day for the whole time, which will last about 15 months. Since I need to make a complete mechanical and historical description of this station by the end of the day, I made this post as a backup in case I couldn't find anything on my own. :/

Land Bridge forms between England and France; French Government claims England as new province

Contact sports found to reduce IQ; enzymes in pigs' bladders blamed

World unites behind global currency; the Canadian Dollar

Japan joins European Union

Video games found to develop hand eye coordination, and make kids into better human beings

RPG's found to build character

Amish President elected; civilization outlawed

"War" declared an expletive in Canada and outlawed

Ah, I just did some extra looking up on this and found this nice link:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/moon_formation_040621.html

There's a short video that explains it quite well. Thanks for the information though swansont.

You can make them transparent?

Gah, forgot about that. I don't have Photoshop, you see, and I make mine in Paint, so that probably explains my ignorance. I guess transparent backgrounds would take up less memory too.

Sorry, didn't mean to be insulting, was just trying to be funny. :/

Personally I thought the Pi symbol was quite a good avatar (though I'm not sure what it's doing now...). It would be neat if it was black on a white background though, or black on a background the same colour as the forum's background.

One funny avatar might just look like this:

EDIT: Fixed some weird glitches

AND DONT YOU THINK MY PI SYMBOL IS THE BEST OF THE 100 x 100 AVATARS?

The automatic answer, reply or greeting to anyone who types in all caps is "No."

I was wondering, does anyone here know what would happen to a satellite if it were placed at the Earth-moon barycenter, between the two but nearer to the moon, where the gravity of the Eatrh and moon cancel each other out? I'm wondering as I've heard of proposals to build space telescopes and such there, but I could never work out how the satellite would stay there without going out of orbit. As far as I know, the pull of gravity from both the Earth and moon would cancel out and the telescope would carry on in a straight line, but the Earth-moon system would continue to rotate. As soon as the moon was nearer, the telescope would start to be attracted by the moon and then it woldn't be fixed at the barycenter. Does anyone know how it works out?

Obviously this is different from the center of mass of the Earth-moon system, which is under the Earth's surface, in case anyone thought I was referring to that.

Oh yeah - FA was the fight with the Smith Legion.

No blike, don't give in to the crowd just because we're weak willed and impulsive! You're an admin, you're supposed to be the one laughing at us when that happens! I mean, you've had that avatar for at least a few months (which is all I know as I've only been posting seriously for that time, so you've probably had it for years). Anyway, I only changed mine because I purchased an original art piece today of the same character in my avatar, which I point out in order to feign superiority over the crowd by artificially separating myself from them and then demeaning crowd psychology. In reality it makes me look arrogant, and then self-abusive as I insult myself, and then self-analytical as I consider my behaviour from a detached perspective, and then schizophrenic, and then stupid.

Well, I have to get a part-time job now, and I'll be trying to write something in my new livejournal account (fiction writing) every day, and lots and lots of reading of fiction and non-fiction - fiction to improve my writing, and non-fiction to improve my chances of getting accepted at the next Cambridge interview. I figure if I can write 3000 words a day, or even 2500, I should have done a million words by the end of the year, and when I really get into a novel I can finish it in about 3 days so I'll have read a lot by then too. I start my first stuff on that account in two days, and I'll be spending most of tomorrow working on the first stuff. But I'll probably still be bored after 2 weeks.

I'm sure you'll find a way to pass the time though jgerlica. The secret lies in doing the same thing for a long time without getting bored of it. Computer games are not the answer (and I'm speaking from experience here, though I confess I am about the start playing one right after posting this), unless you found some form of consructive RPG (ha!) that suited you, in which csae you can kiss goodbye to a good 9 months of your life in one year alone.

I were you though I'd take this opportunity to do all those things you'll just say some time later when you have a job that you can't do "because you don't have time", like learn another language or a musical instrument.

Out of curiousity, what were the subjects that you were doing, and why did you decide to drop them?

Well I finished my last exams today and now look forward to about 15 months of undefined activities (also known as a "gap year"). My current music is "I Don't Have to Work Tomorrow" by The Gaskets. And I agree, it feels grand!

Though this seems pretty dry, when you die the biochemical reactions in your brain which ran electricity around it and made you "think" will shut down, and you become braindead. After that the nerves are dead, so your body loses all motor control, your heart stops, you stop breathing, repairing processes which stop decomposition are no longer there, and your body begins to decompose. But your "conciousness" as such doesn't have to go anywhere, because the electrons are still there in your brain, they just stopped moving. There's no special soul or field which dissapates into the universe or continues on as far as we know, and if there isn't then your life and mind ends here.

This seems like a nsaty way to go if there's no place to end up afterward, but really... think about it: you're not there to think afterward, so what is there to fear if you won't feel anything? You won't just be in darkness alone for eternity, you won't think at all. Better than an eternity in an unchanging heaven if you ask me; it's the ultimate peace because you don't have to wait around for anything. There's nothing to fear, because you won't suffer anything, as you're not there to suffer. If you fear dying unremembered or uncared for, don't worry, because you won't care after you don't exist.

I am of course assuming that there isn't some form of higher force or purpose, or a soul, which hasn't been proven but can't be disproven, but that's what makes sense to me. I'm trying to base that off of current science but it really all revolves around my personal beliefs. If I'm wrong then I'll just have to suffer eternity in hell or something... hmmm.

The size limit used to be larger but then it was reduced... mine used to be 100 x 100 but then I made it smaller from one side in an attempt to get text to line up better, but even the smaller one was too large as the limit was reduced then. My alien hominid is tiny now.

Oh, and maybe this isn't from the same source, but perhaps this image will answer something about Sayonara³'s avatar (the exact image that is, before editing, but his avatar still has part of the chair in it!):

http://www.roomwithamoose.com/pictures/official/tvguide.gif

Anyone? Anyone? Questions?

EDIT: I hope I haven't messed something up...

That's true Sayonara... it would be crazy to try and establish a space tourism industry without securing another, renewable fuel source. Technically it could be done by using hydrogen fuel rockets (just like they do now on rockets) where the hydrogen was collected from water via electrolysis, using renewable electricity sources to do that. But since that would require a bleep load of energy, probably the only way to produce enough without using fossil fuel powr stations would be fusion plants, which incidentally would only be really viable if we could get to hydrogen isotope cources like the Moon for our juice, which needs spacecraft (though the initial energy requirement is negligable of course).

But then putting fusion power plants into the equatoin just inflates the time scale needed before space tourism takes off, doesn't it?

True, space tourism is a pointless luxury of the developed world... though not if it leads to the colonisation of the moon, or hyper-slashes the costs of satellites, telescopes and stations, or revolutionises long-range transport, or reduces pollution by reducing the use of petroleum fuelled aircraft, or provides a boost to the aerospace industry roughly as big as the internet did to the computer industry. Plus it's cool!

In all honesty jordan, I don't think that large scale is as much as 20%, considering that only 12.2% of the world's population has internet access (unless you're talking about the developed world only, in which case nevermind). But obviously space tourism would be a bit more expensive than internet, so maybe that's not a valid comparison.

I personally put 11-25 years though I was close on 26-50 years, because now that the private sector has gotten involved, and given the massive demand ro at least desire to go into space, I wouldn't be surprised if the business opens up sooner. If they can produce space planes - that is, aircraft that can reach the top of the atmosphere on conventional engines and then switch to rockets - they can slash fuel costs by 90%. Most people just want to go into space and go around in zero-g and see the Earth from above rather than go to any particular place.

I was under the impression that homosexuality was in part a natural reponse to overpopulation. The more overpopulated a species gets, the larger the ratio of homosexuals within it, or so I've heard. Hence the reason why about 10% of all humans are gay.

Also, at the risk of sounding patronising, this is a science debate forum, so you should give others a chance (more than 16 minutes anyway) to respond to a large post before claiming to be the victor without hearing any major responses yet. Also, there's not much in the original post to be refuted; you've provided a lot of examples of homosexuality in nature (which nobody argues about) and proceed to claim that it is a genetic defect, without any evidence for that. Aside from saying "no" or "why?", nobody can really respond to that.

We've got one of those at home; they are surprisingly comfortable. Sometimes you might want to lean back after a while if you're tired, but losing that luxury is worth helping your back out. Incidentally my sister has developed back problems requiring the use of painkillers to sleep because she's spent the better part of each day for the past 5 years or so kneeling in front of her computer, and her posture is messed up now, so a good chair is not to be underestimated.

I think it might be better if this were just remade as a new thread (NOT for spam) where people post a minimum of 100 or 200 words and the story progresses in the way of a dramatic story, instead of a convoluted set of barely related if humorous posts. :/ Unless there is something against these non-scientific things in the general discussion forum, in which case that's that.

Sorry about all the posts though; you can delete mine or remove them if you want, as I don't like making posts that might be considered spam. (I think I've increased my daily average from about 0.60 to 0.65 today alone, which I'm not proud of)

He decided to kill himself, with a gun, the end.

Luckily, the genetic workshop owner was kind, and cloned him.

some missionarys picked him up and brought him back to...

where he was at the beginning. In Barbados. He decided

The change istelf also tends to occur over hundreds of years, and there's a period when the field disappears completely, so I don't think it would be very economical if you did get a potential... particularly as the time period between shifts is on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. :/

EDIT: Sorry, I thought you were talking about the pole shift, my mistake.

...looked inside, he realized that he lost his wallet, so, being denominationally loaded, he took out his second and gave

While on holiday in Barbados, Aldo, the chubby but overly...

eccentric man happened across a genetic engineering workshop. As he

Editing over the one I just posted (which was daft), here's an answer for you Phi for All:

Leonhard Euler (1707-1783)

"I die."

I would imagine that the Earth would still be the Earth even before the Mars-sized planet or some such hit it and produced the Moon from the debris, or the poisonous gases were replaced by a breathable atmosphere over time. It would still be the same rock, so to speak. Venus would still be Venus if a planet hit it, formed a moon, and its atmosphere fixed itself up... but only in its name, I would imagine. But as far as everything we know about it is concerned, it might as well be a different planet after that. Which makes one wonder what the Earth would be like if it hadn't been hit by the planet, and if life would have even evolved...

The name "Earth" is the English name for Earth. Here's a list from a German website, but the words are all the same: http://www.wappswelt.de/tnp/nineplanets/days.html I don't know whether all of these words actually have the same meaning in other languages, though it's quite possible; most other versoins of "Earth" stem from the words meaning soil or ground (just as "soil" is sometimes called "earth" now).