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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe

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Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I know that many times you must

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Speaker 1: have imagined what life is like in a zero gravity environment, right, Oh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean you can't help you. You You can't help thinking

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Speaker 1: about it as you read about space exploration and engage

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Speaker 1: with with various science fiction scenarios. What what would it

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Speaker 1: be like to to float free, uh, inside of a capsule? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: And people obviously imagine the very simple stuff, right, you know,

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Speaker 1: floating from one end of the room to the other,

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Speaker 1: not being able to walk normally, maybe fear that you

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Speaker 1: would experience some motion sickness. You know, many, many people

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Speaker 1: who go to space I think at least half I

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Speaker 1: think is the number, experience some kind of space adaptation

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Speaker 1: problems space sickness once they arrive. That might go way

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Speaker 1: after some time. Yeah, Or you tend to focus on

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Speaker 1: the amazing and the horrible ideas, like you know, for instance,

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Speaker 1: how fun it would be to drink orange juice and

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Speaker 1: space by chasing the globs around the capsule, or the

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Speaker 1: more you know, they're definitely horrible or or almost horrible

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Speaker 1: scenarios such as, of course, uh you know, the bone

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Speaker 1: mass density loss, as well as the problem of trying

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Speaker 1: to poop in a toilet. Right, I thought you were

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Speaker 1: going to immediately go to using the bathroom. I was

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Speaker 1: immediately going to go to the bathroom, And then I

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Speaker 1: thought I should I should reference like the really pivotal

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Speaker 1: problem here as opposed to just the one that is difficult. No,

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Speaker 1: I mean, going to the bathroom isn't necessarily a big problem.

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Speaker 1: You know, you it might not sound all that appealing

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Speaker 1: to essentially poop into a vacuum cleaner but or bag.

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Speaker 1: You know a lot of people maybe that's something they've

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Speaker 1: always wanted to try out. It's not necessarily a horrible idea,

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Speaker 1: but it will definitely be horrible. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you make a mistake in this process. Right, That's where

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Speaker 1: the horror stories kick in, is when the the the

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Speaker 1: super expensive space toilet malfunctions. The same thing, of course

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Speaker 1: is true, well not exactly the same thing. A similar

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Speaker 1: thing is true of you mentioned chasing orange juice globules

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Speaker 1: with your mouth to hunt them down, but eating in space,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we depend on gravity so much for a

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Speaker 1: lot of our eating activity. Keeping food in a container.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you just can't compose dishes in space. You've

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Speaker 1: gotta again kind of like you poop into a bag.

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Speaker 1: You've got to eat out of a bag um, or

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Speaker 1: have something that's relatively solid and doesn't have crumbs that

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Speaker 1: are going to get everywhere. I mean, can you think

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Speaker 1: about trying to salt your food in space? You sort

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Speaker 1: of need to like salt into a bag and shake

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Speaker 1: it up or something. Yeah, or just have like a

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Speaker 1: hot sauce packet that you you add into your own

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Speaker 1: mouth afterwards. I feel like I could get buying a

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Speaker 1: number of like bagged curries and whatnot. Yeah. Now, of course,

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Speaker 1: another thing astronaut's report about zero gravity environments is that

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Speaker 1: your sense of taste is all jam up, Like you

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Speaker 1: can't taste things the way you normally would. And part

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Speaker 1: of this probably has to do with the fluid redistribution

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Speaker 1: in your body that leads your head and upper body

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Speaker 1: to swell because you don't have the normal gravity pulling

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Speaker 1: all the fluids in your body towards your feet, which

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Speaker 1: your body is naturally trying to overcompensate for another gravity

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Speaker 1: tidbit that that I always find fascinating is that I

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Speaker 1: believe Mary Roach pointed this out in their book Packing

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Speaker 1: from Mars. If you're in a microgravity zero gravity environment,

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Speaker 1: your bladder doesn't fill up from the bottom up. It

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Speaker 1: feels like in the center, right, It fills like all

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Speaker 1: around towards the very center. So you don't realize that

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Speaker 1: you need a urinate, uh, typically until you're absolutely about

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Speaker 1: to burst, because because we have evolved to sense the

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Speaker 1: to detect that the need for our own urination on

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Speaker 1: a gravity invite, in a gravity environment, on a on

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Speaker 1: a world with gravity, we are creatures of gravity. It

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Speaker 1: reminds me of a piece of terminology I haven't really

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Speaker 1: thought of since elementary school, but back and there would

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Speaker 1: be a thing that would be like a p quote emergency.

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Speaker 1: Remember the emergency. Yeah, well, I mean I guess if

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Speaker 1: you have kids, there's such a thing as an emergency. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I have a five year old son, and so he

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Speaker 1: has these where it's like suddenly it's super dire, like

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Speaker 1: you have he has to run outside of the front

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Speaker 1: doors closer to him, uh, you know, grabbing himself the

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Speaker 1: whole time and going I gotta go pee and the

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Speaker 1: immediately paying Um, this is the kind of thing adults

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Speaker 1: tend not to experience unless perhaps you go into space. Right,

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Speaker 1: So those are the the less dire things now you

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Speaker 1: already alluded to. Of course, the deterioration of body tissues,

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Speaker 1: loss of bone density, loss of muscle mass, and and

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Speaker 1: and all the different negative consequences that happened to the

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Speaker 1: body under zero gravity or microgravity conditions. These things can

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Speaker 1: really stack up. And it's not a trivial effect. Astronauts

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Speaker 1: have to exercise constantly when they're in microgravity environments. They've

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Speaker 1: got a spend hours a day working out in these

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Speaker 1: weird machines just to try to offset some of the

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Speaker 1: damage that's being done to their bodies by the lack

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Speaker 1: of gravity in their environment. And it's still not enough,

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Speaker 1: all right, I mean, they still come back to back

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Speaker 1: to Earth messed up, and they need time to really reacclimate.

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Speaker 1: Hopefully they will eventually come back to something like full health.

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Speaker 1: But but it's not good for you. Yeah, And and

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Speaker 1: of course one of the problems is that uh, astronauts

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Speaker 1: want to go back to space, so they're not necessarily

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Speaker 1: going to be as forthcoming about the about how they're

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Speaker 1: exactly feeling. Yeah, I guess that is a thing to

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Speaker 1: worry about. You'd hope that they'd be accurately reporting how

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Speaker 1: bad it is, but maybe they just they want to

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Speaker 1: get back up there. Yeah, I mean that, that's that's

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Speaker 1: what what I've I've heard is that generally speaking, and

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Speaker 1: you don't go to space then and you're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that's enough of that. I'm good an astronaut. A person's

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Speaker 1: worth their whole life to do this for not even

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Speaker 1: just to do this, but for the chance of doing this.

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Speaker 1: Of course they're gonna want to go back. So my

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Speaker 1: question is, why don't the people who run the I

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Speaker 1: S S. I don't know whoever they are, NASA, I

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Speaker 1: guess maybe not NASA space agencies around the world. Why

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Speaker 1: don't the people who run our space stations just take

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Speaker 1: advantage of the Holtzman effect and put some gravity plating

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Speaker 1: in there so that you can walk around like a

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Speaker 1: normal Earth humans. A. Yeah, so yeah, you're so you're

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Speaker 1: drawing in both Star Trek and Dune here, but they're

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Speaker 1: they're both prime examples because they're straight into the blender.

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Speaker 1: Because this is uh, this is one of the key

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Speaker 1: aspects of our science fiction when it comes to gravity

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Speaker 1: or lack of gravity and space, they're basically three models.

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Speaker 1: Either you're gonna you're gonna try and go hard science

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Speaker 1: and have some sort of an artificial gravity scenario like

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Speaker 1: some of the realistic scenarios we're going to discuss in

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Speaker 1: this podcast. You're gonna just go you know, micro gravity

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Speaker 1: zero G and have people floating around, which of course

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Speaker 1: can be difficult from a special effects standpoint. Or you're

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Speaker 1: gonna go space wizards. Yeah, you're just gonna go magic

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Speaker 1: artificial gravity and just say hey, we let's star trek.

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Speaker 1: We have gravity plates in the floor. Of course there's gravity. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's the and in in in Dune you have the

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Speaker 1: the Holtzman effect generated by the Holtzmann field generator, and

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Speaker 1: Herbert never explain exactly what it was or how it worked,

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Speaker 1: but it allowed for the generation of anti gravity faster

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Speaker 1: than light travel, personal shields, artificial gravity on ships, you know,

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Speaker 1: all the things you need to sort of go ahead

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Speaker 1: and establish your interstellar uh empire, and then tell the

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Speaker 1: stories you want to tell. You know, I'm okay with

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Speaker 1: that because in lots of science fiction stories, essentially they're

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Speaker 1: trying to tell a character drama or it's a fantasy

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Speaker 1: story set in space. I don't need all science fiction

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Speaker 1: to be hard science fiction, but I really do appreciate

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Speaker 1: hard science fiction that tries to take the physics that

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Speaker 1: we know seriously. This does not. But that's okay, you know,

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Speaker 1: that's doing its own thing. Yeah. I mean, Herbert had

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Speaker 1: areas that he was definitely going to focus in on,

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Speaker 1: such as ecological issues, philosophical, religious, cultural issues, and of

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Speaker 1: course this the drama that is especially seen in the

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Speaker 1: first book. So I kind of some slack. I'm fine

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Speaker 1: with some magic anti gravity. Now, in terms of sci

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Speaker 1: fi properties that do take it really seriously. What are

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Speaker 1: What are a few films that come to mind? Well,

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Speaker 1: of course you you immediately think of two thousands, one

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Speaker 1: of Space Odyssey. Now that's got multiple spacecraft. There's a

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Speaker 1: space station and there's a spacecraft that both use something

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about later in the episode rotational

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Speaker 1: UH structures for centripetal force driven or centrifical, centrifugal or

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Speaker 1: centripetal force driven artificial gravity scenarios. Also, there is a

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Speaker 1: good artificial gravity ship in the Martian UH, and I

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Speaker 1: remember I think there's one in a space station and

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Speaker 1: Interstellar isn't there. Yes, I do believe I remember the

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Speaker 1: spinning situation. And I also want to point out James S. A.

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Speaker 1: Corey's Expanse series, both the books and the sci fi

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Speaker 1: TV show, which which does I think a really good

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Speaker 1: job of going after from near future interplanetary culture and technology.

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Speaker 1: And it's also the only sci fi property that I

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Speaker 1: can think of that that actually explores one of the

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Speaker 1: anti gravity schemes we're gonna we're gonna be discussing today

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Speaker 1: linear acceleration. Well, linear acceleration. I can see why that's

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Speaker 1: limited because it has sort of limited applicability if you're

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Speaker 1: going to try to be real about like it only

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Speaker 1: works in certain types of ships doing certain types of

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Speaker 1: things to a certain extent. We can we can chat

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Speaker 1: about this, this this later. Okay, we'll correct me. Well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's not really correction. But I

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Speaker 1: think one of the problems is that linear acceleration model

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Speaker 1: calls for a spaceship that is not a seagoing vessel

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Speaker 1: transported into space, because, as I said before the program,

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Speaker 1: I think a lot of our science fiction and our

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Speaker 1: sci fi ships are essentially seagoing vessels and tales of

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Speaker 1: seagoing vessels and sea and Captain's uh taken from Earth

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Speaker 1: and transposed into space. I mean that was basically Gene

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Speaker 1: Roddenberry's a whole deal with Star Trek. That was m

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Speaker 1: was the Master and Commander books that he wasn't No,

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Speaker 1: it was a different one. Um. I can't remember that

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Speaker 1: the series offhand. But anyway, he was inspired by by

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Speaker 1: literary tales of of of adventurous humans at sea. Uh No, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe I don't know. Well, I guess the Wrath of

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Speaker 1: con is yeah, from Hell's Haired I staff at the right.

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Speaker 1: But it's it's more difficult with linear acceleration because you

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Speaker 1: have to you have to take that concept of an

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Speaker 1: Earth vessel and you really have to literally turn it

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Speaker 1: on its side. You have to think instead of a

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Speaker 1: ship going from port to port and stopping, you have

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Speaker 1: to think about long, continuous journeys. But we'll get into

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Speaker 1: all that in a bit. Okay, Well, I guess we

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Speaker 1: should first just take a real quick look at what

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Speaker 1: is the problem with artificial gravity, with generating gravity and space.

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Speaker 1: Why can't you just do it? Well, I mean, so

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Speaker 1: gravity is something that is a field generated by generally

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Speaker 1: we think of it as mass. It's generated by the

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Speaker 1: stuff in the universe, energy and mass, you know, much

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Speaker 1: more by matter that has mass. So we all know

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Speaker 1: that objects that have mass have a mutual attractive force.

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Speaker 1: They tend to attract one another. And you know, we've

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Speaker 1: known this for a long time. It was the laws

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Speaker 1: of gravitation were to a certain extent well explained by

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Speaker 1: Newton in the seventeenth century, and he basically described the

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Speaker 1: laws of gravitation in a way that that makes sense

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Speaker 1: for most of the stuff we're going to be looking at,

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Speaker 1: for planets, for spaceships, for things like that. Now. Of course,

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Speaker 1: later Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of what gravity is

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Speaker 1: by telling us that gravity is the curvature of space time,

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Speaker 1: and that sort of matter tells spacetime how to curve,

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Speaker 1: and that the curvature of spacetime tells matter how to move.

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Speaker 1: So let's start with masks, and I think that's the

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Speaker 1: that's that's the essential part. That's that's a pretty easy

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Speaker 1: to understand here. So everything with mass, from a dust

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Speaker 1: mote to a star, exerts a gravitational pull. The strength

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Speaker 1: of the poll, however, increases with mass. And proximity to

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Speaker 1: the object. So a smaller object can only attract another

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Speaker 1: small object of it's nearby, but a large object can

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Speaker 1: pull in objects from across the vast distance. And this

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Speaker 1: is kind of this is key to the structure much

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Speaker 1: of the structure of our of our universe. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is how accretion occurs, with little specks of space

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Speaker 1: dust and gas forming together and snowballing into larger cosmic bodies. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, this is how our solar system was created.

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Speaker 1: Was the coalescing of objects by the force of gravity.

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Speaker 1: Things are attracted to each other, eventually becoming stars, planets,

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Speaker 1: all that. Yeah. And then Albert Einstein's general theory of

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Speaker 1: relativity comes along and propose that the gravity is a

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Speaker 1: curve in the fourth dimension of space time. And there's

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Speaker 1: proof to back him up. Given sufficient mass, an object

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Speaker 1: can cause an otherwise straight beam of light to curve.

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Speaker 1: Astronomers called this effect gravitational lensing. Yeah, this was shown experimentally.

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Speaker 1: It was one of the fir speak experimental proofs of

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Speaker 1: Einstein's theory of relativity is that you could see light

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Speaker 1: from stars passing behind the Sun bending as it came

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Speaker 1: right around the Sun. So you know, if you could

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Speaker 1: have a solar eclipse and shield out the light from

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Speaker 1: the Sun, you could see stars in the background being

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Speaker 1: warped by the Sun's gravity as the beams of light

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Speaker 1: passed close to our Sun. Yeah, and similarly, the less

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Speaker 1: gravity there is, the slower time passes. And this is

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Speaker 1: a phenomenon is gravitational time dilation, and this is this

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Speaker 1: is the less key to what we're talking about. But

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Speaker 1: it just drives home like the place of gravity, uh

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Speaker 1: in our universe. Yeah, it sounds this is one of

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Speaker 1: those things that sounds like fantasy, but it's absolutely true.

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Speaker 1: And you saw that We mentioned the movie Interstellar earlier.

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Speaker 1: There's actually, Uh, there are a couple of great scenes

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Speaker 1: and the demonstrate this where they go down to a

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Speaker 1: planet with an incredibly high gravitational pull and uh, while

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Speaker 1: they're down there on the planet, much less time passes

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Speaker 1: for the people on the planet than passes for people

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Speaker 1: in orbit farther away. Yeah. As a physicist Paul Davies

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Speaker 1: points out, time runs a little bit faster in space

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Speaker 1: than it does down on Earth. It runs a little

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Speaker 1: faster on the roof than it does in the basement,

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Speaker 1: and that's a measurable effect. Then's the basics on gravity.

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Speaker 1: But then there's also this additional area of quantum gravitation

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Speaker 1: and the idea that that there is a there's a

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Speaker 1: hypothetical particle, the graviton, which in theory could cause optics

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Speaker 1: to be attracted to one another. Yeah, and this would

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Speaker 1: be the mediating particle of the force of gravity, in

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Speaker 1: the same way you've got like the electromagnetic force, the

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Speaker 1: mediating particle there is the photon. Hypothetically you'd have some

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Speaker 1: mediating particle delivering the force of gravity. But we've never

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Speaker 1: seen gravitons in the universe. Right. This is the this

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Speaker 1: whole hypothesis comes together because quantum theory, to refresh, addresses

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Speaker 1: how the universe works at the smallest subotonic levels, and

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Speaker 1: the resulting model here does not explain gravity. So gravitons

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Speaker 1: and the theory of quantum gravity isn't a attempt to

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Speaker 1: reconcile general relativity with quantum theory. It's a basically an

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Speaker 1: attempt to patch up a hole in the standard model

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Speaker 1: of particle physics, which cannot explain gravity. Now, the last

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Speaker 1: time I read seriously about gravitons was a few years ago.

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Speaker 1: I wonder if any recent experiments in our particle colliders

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Speaker 1: have have shed any light on that. I mean, our

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Speaker 1: physicists now thinking gravitons are more likely or less likely.

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Speaker 1: So well, we certainly don't have any definitive proof on

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Speaker 1: the matter yet. But I guess for the purposes of

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Speaker 1: our discussion here, since we don't have proof of gravitons,

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Speaker 1: we can't really come up with a scheme to employ

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Speaker 1: them or manipulate them in some way that would give

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Speaker 1: us artificial gravity. Yeah, so, I guess are the point

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Speaker 1: of our bringing up gravitons is that you can't just

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Speaker 1: wave a magic wand and say, ah ha, gravitons will

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Speaker 1: be the thing we use to create artificial gravity in space.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we don't know if they exist. If they

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Speaker 1: do exist, I'm not sure anybody has a coherent idea

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Speaker 1: of how they could be harnessed to provide artificial gravity

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Speaker 1: in space. It just seems like I don't know what

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Speaker 1: is So if they're generated by mass, would you not

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Speaker 1: need mass to generate them? Yeah, I could. I looked

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Speaker 1: around in my research and I couldn't find any, like,

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Speaker 1: any real theories about how gravitons. If the exists might

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Speaker 1: be utilized in this fashion, and I'm not I'm not

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Speaker 1: aware of any science fiction that explores the possibility, but

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Speaker 1: I would love to know about it. I think when

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Speaker 1: it does, it's more just the kind of it's the

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Speaker 1: hand waving magic. Right. So we come back to mass,

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Speaker 1: then yeah, you could I guess, have a spaceship that's

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Speaker 1: as massive as the Earth, and then that would have

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Speaker 1: that would give you the gravitational pool you'd need. That's

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Speaker 1: not exactly a terrible idea, and it's not unexplored. I

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Speaker 1: mean there have been these ideas, for example, in you know,

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Speaker 1: stellar engineering projects that say, hey, so let's say we

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Speaker 1: want to travel to another solar system, wouldn't it be

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Speaker 1: easier instead of trying to build an arc ship to

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Speaker 1: take us there, to see if we can build a

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Speaker 1: structure around the Sun that will reflect some of its

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Speaker 1: radiation in and allow us to steer the movement of

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Speaker 1: the entire Solar system. Oh yeah, yeah, I just move

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Speaker 1: the Solar system. Yeah, so like the Solar system becomes

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Speaker 1: our spaceship. You can build these things called a hypothetical

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Speaker 1: structure called a scatterw thruster. Essentially, it would just drive

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Speaker 1: the Sun Yeah. That actually features into No Surprise and

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Speaker 1: Eda in Banks book, but I'm not going to say

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Speaker 1: which one because it's kind of it's kind of a spoiler, Okay,

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Speaker 1: but it's one of them. Leave it, leave it there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So that is one idea though, if you wanted to

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Speaker 1: travel through space on an object that has Earth gravity,

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Speaker 1: you could just take Earth with you. Of course, it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't really make sense to say, well, I want to

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Speaker 1: build a spaceship that generates Earth gravity through natural mass

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Speaker 1: generating effects, because then you would just be building a

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Speaker 1: spaceship the massive Earth. Right. And if you can do that,

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Speaker 1: then I mean you're already You're already a pretty powerful civilization.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure where you would rank on the Kardashian scale,

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Speaker 1: but you'd be you'd be potent. Definitely a cardas chief one,

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Speaker 1: maybe a cardas chief two. Alright, So we've talked about

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Speaker 1: these scenarios involving natural gravity and and the idea of

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Speaker 1: manipulating natural gravitational forces. Luckily we're not, we're not forced

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Speaker 1: to contend only with those. We can also deal with

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Speaker 1: artificial gravity, not in a magic sense, but in a

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Speaker 1: but in a real sense. Yeah, and in this way,

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Speaker 1: there are ways to generate artificial gravity that are not

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Speaker 1: hypothetical or speculative at all. I mean, this is totally easy,

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Speaker 1: standard settled physics, because one of the insights of modern

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Speaker 1: physics is that gravity is in fact indistinguishable from acceleration.

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Speaker 1: When you're being pulled toward a planet's center and the

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Speaker 1: planet has a mass such that it generates a surface

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Speaker 1: gravity of nine point eight meters per second per second,

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Speaker 1: which is what Earth's surface gravity is, right, or whether

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Speaker 1: you're accelerating through space at an acceleration rate of nine

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Speaker 1: point eight meters per second per second, the effect you

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Speaker 1: experience is exactly the same. You can't tell the difference

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Speaker 1: between these two situations. And so knowing this, we couldn't

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Speaker 1: turn the idea of acceleration to our advantage. And that's

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Speaker 1: where our first model comes into play. But first we're

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Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. All right, we're back. So

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Speaker 1: the first model of artificial gravity we're going to discuss

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Speaker 1: here is the one that I alluded to earlier and

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Speaker 1: discussing the expanse, and one that I think, by and large,

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Speaker 1: I cannot think of another single science fiction property that

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Speaker 1: employs this as their artificial gravity. On a spaceship. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: linear acceleration, I can't really think of many that do.

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Speaker 1: But so, what's the basic idea here, Robert? All Right, So,

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Speaker 1: if you've ever written on a roller coaster and felt

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Speaker 1: yourself plastered to the back of the seat, then you've

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Speaker 1: experienced some of the power here. If you were in

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Speaker 1: a fighter jet and you were, you know, traveling at

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Speaker 1: a sufficient speed to pull you multiple g's, you're you're

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Speaker 1: also experiencing this as you're pushed back into the chair. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: if you can imagine being in that fighter jet and

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Speaker 1: you're being pulled back into your chair, except instead of

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Speaker 1: going back into your chair, you put your feet on

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Speaker 1: the chair, put your head in the direction that the

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Speaker 1: fighter jet is going, and the acceleration rate of that

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Speaker 1: fighter jet is nine point eight meters per second per second,

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Speaker 1: it would suddenly feel a lot like it feels to

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Speaker 1: stand on the ground. Right. Imagine a skyscraper as a

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Speaker 1: rocket ship. Imagine it blasting through space at such a

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Speaker 1: speed that the G force uh equaled the pull of

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Speaker 1: Earth's gravity on the internal environment. I'm actually gonna read

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Speaker 1: a couple of quick quotes from James S. A. Corey's

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Speaker 1: UH first Expanse novel, because I believe that these really

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Speaker 1: capture what we're talking about. So he's describing the Donager

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Speaker 1: space ship here quote. Like all long flight spacecraft, it

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Speaker 1: was built in the office tower configuration. Each deck one

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Speaker 1: floor of the building. Ladders are elevators running down the axis.

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Speaker 1: Constant thrust took the place of gravity. Now, there's also

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Speaker 1: a Mormon generation ship in the book that uses both

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Speaker 1: linear thrust and a rotating wheel, which we'll get into,

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Speaker 1: and this is the description for it. Each compartment within

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Speaker 1: the massive rings was built on a swivel system that

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Speaker 1: allowed the chambers to reorient to thrust gravity when the

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Speaker 1: ring stopped spinning and the station flew to its next

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Speaker 1: work location. Okay, so by describing these ships with floors

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Speaker 1: like an office building, what you what you should really

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Speaker 1: picture is like you've got a skyscraper and it's flying

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Speaker 1: through space with the top of the skyscraper as the

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Speaker 1: front the nose of the ship, and all of the

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Speaker 1: floors are where your feet would be towards the back

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Speaker 1: of the ship and your head would be facing the

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Speaker 1: front of the ship. It's taking the holes like starship

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Speaker 1: enterprise situation and turning it sideways. If you imagine the

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Speaker 1: starship Enterprise flying in such a way that the top

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Speaker 1: of the ship is the front of the ship. I

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Speaker 1: realized this gets complicated when you're talking about outer space.

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Speaker 1: But you're you're taking and in this part of the problem.

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Speaker 1: Like we we understand the movement of things in our

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Speaker 1: situational uh positioning in a gravity rich world, and when

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Speaker 1: we try and take it out of that, it's it's

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Speaker 1: kind of hard to picture some of these, uh, these situations, right.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, so if this is taking place in space,

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Speaker 1: you would be able to generate a force towards the

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Speaker 1: floor that simulates Earth gravity. Now, this would this would

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Speaker 1: have some complications I'm imagining because in order to perfectly

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Speaker 1: simulate Earth gravity, maybe you don't care how perfect it is,

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Speaker 1: but if the goal was to perfectly simulate Earth gravity,

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Speaker 1: you would need to be constantly accelerating at nine point

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Speaker 1: eight meters per second per second, that's a lot of

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Speaker 1: constant acceleration. You're always going that much faster. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, we we see the required propulsion at work

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Speaker 1: when a chemical rocket creates enough thrust to counter this

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Speaker 1: gravitational pull and achieve escape pul loss. But they're only

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Speaker 1: achieving it from a matter of seconds or minutes. For

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Speaker 1: our spaceship here are theoretical spaceship, our office building on

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Speaker 1: its side, you'd need something more constant. So just to

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Speaker 1: refresh on the gs here, standing on the Earth, you'd

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Speaker 1: experience one G in free fall, saying an elevator or

428
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:21,480
Speaker 1: the vomit comet, you'd experience zero G. At two G

429
00:23:21,760 --> 00:23:24,600
Speaker 1: feel twice as heavy. So you'd need a spaceship capable

430
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 1: of propelling you fast enough, like you said, to exert

431
00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:31,160
Speaker 1: a constant one G. So one of uh, the sources

432
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 1: we turned to for this was a wonderful two thousand

433
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 1: seven book Artificial Gravity, edited by Giles Clement and Angelie Buckley,

434
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: And there's an article in there by Buckley, Clement, and

435
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:49,800
Speaker 1: William Pulaski of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and uh they

436
00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:53,280
Speaker 1: point out that a spaceship could, in theory accelerate for

437
00:23:53,359 --> 00:23:56,639
Speaker 1: the first half of a Mars journey, then decelerate on

438
00:23:56,680 --> 00:23:59,440
Speaker 1: the second half, and in doing so maintain one G

439
00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:03,560
Speaker 1: and reach Mars in two to five tays depending on

440
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: the distance I mean that would be. You'd have to

441
00:24:07,560 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: have incredible power, yes, incredible thrust like a powerful fuel

442
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: to accelerate that much. Also, I'm how did so that

443
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: they explain how you do the flip over. You'd have

444
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:21,880
Speaker 1: to be accelerating one g the like half the way there,

445
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:24,800
Speaker 1: and then you have to be decelerating at one g

446
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: the other half of the way there, which means I

447
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:29,960
Speaker 1: guess you'd have to flip the spaceship around so that

448
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 1: the floors stays the floor. Yeah, or you'd have to

449
00:24:32,480 --> 00:24:35,040
Speaker 1: have some sort of like an internal habitat that's like

450
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: a capsule on it rotates that or yeah, I guess

451
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:41,600
Speaker 1: you could have a spaceship where the floors and ceilings

452
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:45,119
Speaker 1: are both can both work as floors, right, And of

453
00:24:45,119 --> 00:24:48,200
Speaker 1: course the distance here involved not to go into the

454
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:52,879
Speaker 1: Mars opposition details here too much, but the maximum distance

455
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: between these two planets is two and fifty million miles

456
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 1: with the sun between the two. So I guess that's

457
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: not doable in two to five days. The I would

458
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 1: assume you would not try and make the journey there

459
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: unless I mean, but but if you're achieving speeds like that,

460
00:25:05,680 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: then you know, maybe you'd go you'd go for it,

461
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 1: but that the average distance is more like one forty

462
00:25:12,640 --> 00:25:16,440
Speaker 1: million miles and the closest possible distance is a tantalizing

463
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:20,480
Speaker 1: thirty three point nine million miles. But anyway, that's this

464
00:25:20,520 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: is the basic Yeah. But yeah, you would need to

465
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 1: have uh, some pretty awesome power at your disposal, so

466
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: awesome that I believe in the Expanse books like they

467
00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: basically can't be the authors who publishes as as James S. A. Corey, Uh,

468
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:39,320
Speaker 1: they had to sort of create their own fictionalized propulsion

469
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: breakthrough to make that possible. Here's where you need the

470
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: magic in this version. Yeah, instead of having magic gravity plating,

471
00:25:45,880 --> 00:25:49,399
Speaker 1: you have magic propulsion. And I guess this is the

472
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: case with a lot of sci fi Like you, there's

473
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 1: a certain place you you want human civilization and or

474
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:59,400
Speaker 1: alien civilizations to be at, you know, to be able

475
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:01,920
Speaker 1: to discuss them and look at the ramifications. But yeah,

476
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:04,040
Speaker 1: we don't have all the steps worked out about how

477
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:06,399
Speaker 1: we'd get there. There's there are certain breakthroughs that we

478
00:26:06,480 --> 00:26:09,600
Speaker 1: need to take place, and you could explore them and

479
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:11,520
Speaker 1: try and come up with some sort of uh, you know,

480
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 1: complex of physics space theory, or you could just you know,

481
00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:16,920
Speaker 1: put a post it note there and and maybe write

482
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: magic on it. Yeah, even in a lot of so

483
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,000
Speaker 1: called hard sci fi or mostly hard sci fi. You know,

484
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: you've got like a list of steps in how something

485
00:26:24,320 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: is achieved, and most of the steps are something that's

486
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: scientifically rigorous, but one of the steps in the middle

487
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,560
Speaker 1: is like, here's a magical element. I mean, it's kind

488
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:37,120
Speaker 1: of like with a lot of speculative properties that I enjoy.

489
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll be something completely ridiculous, uh, something completely magical,

490
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: But then you discuss all the real world ways it

491
00:26:44,320 --> 00:26:46,760
Speaker 1: might play out. Like one example that comes to mind

492
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:50,400
Speaker 1: is a World War z you know, the Zombie book.

493
00:26:50,640 --> 00:26:53,080
Speaker 1: Not so much of the movie, but the book looked

494
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: at it's some possible ideas for how this would play out,

495
00:26:56,640 --> 00:27:01,360
Speaker 1: like culturally and politically, uh, without really getting bogged down

496
00:27:01,359 --> 00:27:03,639
Speaker 1: in the fact that zombies are are kind of a

497
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,479
Speaker 1: dumb idea and can't actually exist. But it's like, roll

498
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 1: with me. Zombies are real, Let's discuss how this might work.

499
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 1: I want to defend zombies just a little bit. There

500
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: are different types of zombie scenarios, and some some are

501
00:27:15,760 --> 00:27:19,919
Speaker 1: much more plausible than others. Reanimated corpses, no, but you know,

502
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: rage zombies, some kind of weird virus, okay, maybe, okay,

503
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:25,840
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, I mean we have raybies. I mean,

504
00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: we don't have rabies, but there is ray you never know, alright,

505
00:27:30,520 --> 00:27:33,560
Speaker 1: So you're probably wondering. Okay, we've established how this would work,

506
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: we've talked a little about the sci fi, but what

507
00:27:35,359 --> 00:27:38,600
Speaker 1: kind of work has actually gone into testing it. Well,

508
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: they've been at least a couple of experiments. The European

509
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: Space Agency e s A experimented with this in nineteen

510
00:27:44,560 --> 00:27:47,440
Speaker 1: eighty five on the Space Lab D one. Now I

511
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 1: couldn't find an image of it, but I'm assuming it's

512
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: it's the same sled or one similar uh that was

513
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,880
Speaker 1: used in the nine eight one experiment where they were,

514
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: you know, messing with the nineteen eight one. It's basically this,

515
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: this chair on a if you okay, imagine a short

516
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: train track that you could fit in a room and

517
00:28:04,800 --> 00:28:07,400
Speaker 1: then you have a chair on it. I'm glad, I'm

518
00:28:07,440 --> 00:28:10,159
Speaker 1: glad you've provided this picture. But this is crazy. It

519
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: is It looks crazy. There's so there's a imagine a

520
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:15,440
Speaker 1: little train on a little train car, and there's a

521
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:17,639
Speaker 1: chair on it, and a chair swivels and you have

522
00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: somebody strapped into the chair with a bunch of you know,

523
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: electronic dud dads connected to them, and then they would, uh,

524
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 1: they would essentially like fly back and forth on this

525
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: little train track with the with the seat swiveling along

526
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: the way. It's a very Terry Gilliam contraption, isn't it. Yes,

527
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 1: it it does. It looks very Terry Gilliam. Now, they

528
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,440
Speaker 1: tried this out and it peaked speeds, it only provided

529
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:45,680
Speaker 1: point to G and according to a Clementon company, the

530
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: threshold for the perception of linear acceleration in humans is

531
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,640
Speaker 1: on the order of point zero zero seven G, and

532
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:55,200
Speaker 1: the threshold for humans in space seems to be more

533
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 1: like between somewhere between point twenty two and point five G. Yeah.

534
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 1: I've got some notes about that later on, about what

535
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: exactly would be tolerable as artificial gravity, But I don't know,

536
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe you're getting to it right now. So

537
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: you the the idea here is that you wouldn't necessarily

538
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:15,560
Speaker 1: have to have one full G in order to counteract

539
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: some of the worst effects of microgravity. Yeah, it kind

540
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:20,080
Speaker 1: of comes down to what are you looking to do?

541
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: Are you looking to to to counteract the effects of

542
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: microgravity to a certain extent to like just get you

543
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:30,160
Speaker 1: there a little bit, or have like a perfect Earth simulation. Right,

544
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,440
Speaker 1: do you want to, um, you know, awaken a comma

545
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: patient a board your spaceship and trick them into thinking

546
00:29:36,080 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 1: that there's still on Earth, right, Like that's a tricker scenario.

547
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:40,719
Speaker 1: I mean maybe you could do it by telling them

548
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: that they're they're they're nauseous or something. I don't know, Um,

549
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: they have they have some sort of illness, but you've

550
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: got an inner ear problem. Gravity is normal. Yeah, as

551
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 1: a Clinton company point out in the article, quote, perhaps

552
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:55,960
Speaker 1: it is not necessary to perceive artificial gravity at the

553
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: cognitive level for it to be effective as a countermeasure. However,

554
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:02,360
Speaker 1: for purposes of defining the comfort zone of astronauts and

555
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,959
Speaker 1: artificial gravity environments, whether it's a rotating spacecraft or an

556
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: onboard centrifuge, it would be extremely useful to determine the

557
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: threshold value of perceived artificial gravity. Unfortunately, there are no

558
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:15,080
Speaker 1: plans to put a human centrifuge on board the I

559
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 1: s S, at least in the near term. So when

560
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: it comes to g's um, you know, Mars is point

561
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 1: three seven six gs, Neptune is one point fourteen G

562
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:28,920
Speaker 1: Saturn is one point of seven ges. Guess they're not

563
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: gonna be standing on the surfaces of Neptune or but

564
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: we have stood on the surface of the Moon, which

565
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,840
Speaker 1: is point one six gs. And Clement and Company point

566
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: out that when astronauts visited the Moon, they had trouble

567
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 1: figuring out which weight was up and down. They didn't

568
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:45,320
Speaker 1: they didn't perceive a four point five degree floor tilt

569
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 1: in their landing unit during Apollo eleven. Can you imagine that,

570
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,640
Speaker 1: Like you're you're on a slope, but the gravity is

571
00:30:51,680 --> 00:30:54,160
Speaker 1: so weak you can't you don't get that you're on

572
00:30:54,200 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 1: a slope, like you can't feel it. And then when

573
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: they're bouncing around out there on the lunar surface, Uh,

574
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: there were a lot of dumbles, and a number of

575
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: these stemmed up from the inability to evaluate ter rain slope. Yeah. Again,

576
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,360
Speaker 1: like you can't tell the difference between uphill and downhill.

577
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine. Yeah, and yet, I mean the

578
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: moon gravity is perfectly enough to keep you tethered to

579
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon. You're not gonna fly away

580
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: or anything, right, Yeah, You're not gonna leap up and

581
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: achieve you know, escape velocity. Now there is another study

582
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: and this is actually a proposed study currently and this

583
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: is the NASA funded turbo lift the turbolator. Yeah, and this, Uh.

584
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,560
Speaker 1: The idea here is to combat the effects of microgravity

585
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: by accelerating an astronaut literally had one G for what

586
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: a round of one second, and then it's rotated uh

587
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: degrees to prepare for one G deceleration. It's kind of

588
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:51,920
Speaker 1: like being shaken up in a cocktail shaker, uh, and

589
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: only your legs always point in the direction of the

590
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: shake it. It would, theoretically, according to the the proposers here, uh,

591
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: feel like bouncing on a trampoline. So this would be

592
00:32:02,080 --> 00:32:06,600
Speaker 1: a suggestion, not for a habitable environment or from a

593
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: for a spaceship, but maybe for essentially some kind of

594
00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: exercise machine. Is that what we're thinking? Yeah, that that's

595
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:16,120
Speaker 1: what That's what I'm getting from this is that said quote.

596
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: The intermittent loading is intended to reduce or eliminate the

597
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: physiological deconditioning in a comprehensive multisystem manner. It would be

598
00:32:24,240 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: it would be a situation where like, hey, Joe, I

599
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 1: know you've got stuff to do on the spaceship, but

600
00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: it's time for your your one G treatment. You need

601
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: to climb in the capsool here and we're gonna shoot

602
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: you back and forth for however long your treatment last.

603
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: The flipping bullet. Yeah, Now, this does indicate that there

604
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:44,080
Speaker 1: are these two very different schools of thought about what

605
00:32:44,160 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: to do when generating artificial gravity. I guess we sort

606
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,680
Speaker 1: of alluded to this a minute ago, but you still

607
00:32:49,720 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: should keep in mind this question of what is the goal.

608
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 1: Is the goal just to have an environment you can

609
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: go into often enough to offset some of the negative

610
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: health effects of being in space. Is it just sort

611
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 1: of like tiny jim for your body to stay healthy,

612
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: or are you actually trying to create an environment where

613
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: some of the effects of Earth gravity are simulated for

614
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: normal living purposes, so you can salt your food, so

615
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:17,920
Speaker 1: you can go to the bathroom without pooping into a

616
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner. Now I do have to say that, um,

617
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,320
Speaker 1: I can't help but think that this the jumper scenario,

618
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,120
Speaker 1: this turbo lift scenario, I could see it working if

619
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: you had somebody in a hibernation state or some sort

620
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 1: of suspended animation, like maybe you load their their corpsicle

621
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 1: into one of these and shoot them back and forth.

622
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: To to keep their to avoid any debilitating effects involved

623
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 1: with their space travel. But of course for that to work,

624
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 1: you have to have some sort of hibernation um, a

625
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 1: technique worked out, and that's a whole. That's a whole

626
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: another podcast topic. Now. In terms of complications with this

627
00:33:55,680 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: linear model here of artificial gravity, you of course you

628
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: have to be in motion, you right, to be able

629
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: to produce that effect. Uh, you have to always be

630
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 1: on your way somewhere or taking a roundabout way to

631
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:11,520
Speaker 1: continue the effect. But I'm not sure if that's such

632
00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:14,080
Speaker 1: a detriment because, after all, space is big. The distance

633
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:17,759
Speaker 1: between planets, but certainly between stars is vast, and there's

634
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,239
Speaker 1: plenty of room to to run around out there. Well yeah,

635
00:34:20,280 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: I mean if you actually want to travel to say,

636
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:24,880
Speaker 1: another star system, and not just say to Mars, but

637
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: if you want to go to Alpha Centauri or wherever.

638
00:34:27,520 --> 00:34:31,920
Speaker 1: I mean, as much acceleration as possible is good. Uh,

639
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:34,439
Speaker 1: it's still I guess I have the question about what

640
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 1: the propulsion idea is, Like, how do you constantly generate

641
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:41,320
Speaker 1: that much acceleration exactly? Yeah, I guess with some models

642
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: you have these ideas of like you know, kind of

643
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,759
Speaker 1: like beamed propulsion back from Earth where you line you know,

644
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:50,960
Speaker 1: you like you line up this payload delivery of energy. Um,

645
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: that's right. That's what we have in Blindside, the novel

646
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 1: that you just finished reading and I'm currently reading. Yeah.

647
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: I mean the whole thing about this is this seems

648
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 1: like a method that would work and would be very interesting. Um,

649
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:06,360
Speaker 1: but I guess it's just waiting on some kind of

650
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 1: abundance of energy and propulsion technology and the than the

651
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:13,319
Speaker 1: means to use it or the opportunity to use it.

652
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's linear acceleration for you. That's one model.

653
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: We're gonna take another break, and when we come back,

654
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: we're going to dive into the much more popular artificial

655
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:25,720
Speaker 1: gravity scheme, the one that you see in the movies.

656
00:35:25,719 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: And then of course is the spinning habitats, the Taurus,

657
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,760
Speaker 1: the standard towards the double Taurus. All these different models

658
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: were of course talking about, uh, the manipulation of centripetal force.

659
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So, Robert, you've seen two thousand

660
00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: one of Space Odyssey. Oh yeah, one of my favorites.

661
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,279
Speaker 1: And so if you've seen that movie, you've seen at

662
00:35:50,360 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 1: least a couple of different versions of the design for

663
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: artificial gravity that exploits centripetal force or centrifugal force. I'll

664
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:00,759
Speaker 1: talk about the difference between them in a minute now.

665
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: One example in the movie is this giant space station

666
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:08,360
Speaker 1: called space Station five V for five, and it's shaped

667
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:12,680
Speaker 1: like a wagon wheel. And the other is this round module.

668
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: It's a spherical module within this spaceship that how controls

669
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 1: in the movie, the spaceship the Discovery one, which is

670
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: the one that's on the way to I think it's

671
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 1: Jupiter in the movie and Saturn in the book. Is

672
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: that right, I believe. So, yeah, this is the one

673
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: that's like really round in the front and long in

674
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: the back, right, And so in this crew module in

675
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 1: the Discovery one in the movie, you see a gravity

676
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 1: like effect pulling passengers to the floor along the equator

677
00:36:40,440 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 1: of this compartment. So we can see the effect in

678
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: this one scene where Frank Pool, the astronaut, is jogging

679
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: in full circles around the inside wall of the sphere.

680
00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: So he's jogging laps, but he's not jogging horizontal laps.

681
00:36:56,280 --> 00:37:00,560
Speaker 1: He's jogging full circular orbital laps. Yeah, say it's one

682
00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: of it's it's one of you, not like the greatest

683
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,719
Speaker 1: sequence in a science fiction film. It's just so beautiful

684
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: and and and and and thought provoking. So there are

685
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 1: multiple ways that you could set something like this up,

686
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: and I'll explore a few of those models in a minute,

687
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 1: But the basic idea is that you create a spinning

688
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 1: structure within your spacecraft, and the outside edge of the

689
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:28,040
Speaker 1: spinning environment becomes a floor that pushes up against your

690
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:31,319
Speaker 1: feet the same way the ground pushes up against your

691
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 1: feet as you are attracted steadily towards the center of

692
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: the earth. So, in other words, it simulates the effect

693
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,719
Speaker 1: of gravity. Now, like linear acceleration that we just talked about,

694
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 1: rotation based gravity also relies on the pseudo forced sensation

695
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:51,320
Speaker 1: generated by inertia to simulate gravity. It's your body's inertia

696
00:37:52,080 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 1: feeling like the gravitational force that pulls you towards the

697
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:57,839
Speaker 1: center of the Earth. Now, in the case of the

698
00:37:57,840 --> 00:38:01,799
Speaker 1: spinning model, this is known as trifical force or the

699
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: centrifugal pseudo force. Now, there are two terms that are

700
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: easy to get confused here, centripetal force and centrifugal force. Uh.

701
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: Centripetal forces is the real force in physics, and this

702
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 1: is really there two sides of the same coin. So

703
00:38:15,920 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: centripetal force is something that you will notice if you've

704
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: ever done the old experiment, you know, the thing you

705
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:22,800
Speaker 1: do when you're a kid, is you get a bucket

706
00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 1: of water and you spin it around in a vertical

707
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 1: circle so that the top of the circle your buckets

708
00:38:28,880 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 1: upside down, but the water stays in the bucket doesn't

709
00:38:32,080 --> 00:38:33,920
Speaker 1: fall out like it would if you just held the

710
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 1: bucket upside down, and you you realize intuitively something's going

711
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,640
Speaker 1: on there about the force of your swinging motion with

712
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:44,760
Speaker 1: your arm. For some reason, it being at the top

713
00:38:44,840 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 1: of a circular motion keeps the water in the bucket

714
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:50,520
Speaker 1: in a way that just turning the bucket upside down

715
00:38:50,560 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: in the same place wouldn't. And so what that is

716
00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:57,680
Speaker 1: is the centripetal force of the bucket pushing down on

717
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:00,759
Speaker 1: the water to hold it in, while the inertia of

718
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 1: the water flying in this circular motion wants it to

719
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 1: fly off in a tangential pattern, uh, and a tangent

720
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: going straight out from the path it's flying along. So

721
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,360
Speaker 1: you can think about it's sort of like anytime something

722
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 1: is is flying around in a circular motion. Say a

723
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:21,520
Speaker 1: space station is orbiting the Earth, what it really wants

724
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: to do is keep traveling in a straight line forever. Right,

725
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:27,760
Speaker 1: So if you've got the I s s it's orbiting

726
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 1: the Earth, what what it wants to do if there

727
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: were suddenly no Earth is just travel straight ahead, So

728
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:36,560
Speaker 1: it just keep going off into space. But what the

729
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,320
Speaker 1: Earth does is it exerts a certain amount of force,

730
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:42,920
Speaker 1: pulling that the space station down towards its center of

731
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 1: gravity and curving its path. And the same thing happens

732
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 1: when you've got an object swinging in a circular path,

733
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: but contained by some kind of physical structure or force,

734
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 1: like your arm and the bucket holding the water in place. Now, so,

735
00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 1: so the centripetal force is the inward force that pulls

736
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:05,360
Speaker 1: everything toward the center of motion in a circular pattern.

737
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 1: The centrifugal force sometimes referred to as a pseudo force

738
00:40:08,840 --> 00:40:11,960
Speaker 1: because it's really just inertia in a moving reference frame.

739
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,520
Speaker 1: That's the apparent force that acts on an object moving

740
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 1: in a circular path to push it outward from the

741
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: center around which it rotates. And this would be taking

742
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 1: the place of the gravity that actually pulls your feet

743
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:27,799
Speaker 1: towards the ground on Earth. Now you can also feel

744
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: the intuitive physics of this on your body, just in

745
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: your imagination. If you've ever done the carnival ride Robert,

746
00:40:34,160 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: where you get on the what is it the cyclotron,

747
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 1: the circulator gravitron, it's the thing where they put you

748
00:40:39,600 --> 00:40:42,240
Speaker 1: in a cage and your back is against the wall,

749
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,720
Speaker 1: and it's this big disc where everybody's back is against

750
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 1: the inside wall of the disk, and then it starts

751
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: spinning you around very fast, and suddenly you're just pinned

752
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: to the back while you can't lift your arms up. Uh.

753
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: And it's it's all this force that's that wants to

754
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: throw you off into space, but in fact there's a

755
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:04,799
Speaker 1: wall they're stopping you, so instead of being thrown off

756
00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 1: into space, you're just pinned to the wall. Yeah, that's

757
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:11,240
Speaker 1: a carnival death machine that I've probably only written once,

758
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: but but I have written the similar device, and that

759
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: is of course the like the pirate swinging ship. You know, Okay,

760
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,320
Speaker 1: it has a similar similar effect as the bucket scenario

761
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 1: if the pirates swinging ship or to go all the

762
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:30,200
Speaker 1: way around, not the ones I ride, but so interesting.

763
00:41:30,800 --> 00:41:34,000
Speaker 1: Uh well, it's also yeah, this the centripetal centrifical force.

764
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: It's the same thing also that allows you in a

765
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: roller coaster to go around a loop. Roller coasters that

766
00:41:39,640 --> 00:41:43,400
Speaker 1: have loops because the force that's keeping you, you know,

767
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:46,360
Speaker 1: you want your body wants to continue on a straight

768
00:41:46,400 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: line as it gets to the top of the loop

769
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: and just be flung off up into the sky. But

770
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: instead you've got that roller coaster they're holding you, so

771
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: instead you're pressed down into your seat, which is actually

772
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: straight up from the ground. Um. And so the same

773
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:03,759
Speaker 1: thing you can imagine could happen in space. If you've

774
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 1: got a space environment and you're on a thing that's spinning,

775
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 1: you know that you will experience some kind of force

776
00:42:11,320 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: pinning you to the outside wall of that spinning structure

777
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 1: in the same way as as the bucket of water

778
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 1: and the loop de loop on the roller coaster. So

779
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:23,239
Speaker 1: then the question is how do you generate the right

780
00:42:23,280 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 1: amount of force there. Obviously, you don't want your the

781
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 1: inside of your space station to be like the Gravitron

782
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:31,439
Speaker 1: ride where you can't even lift your arm and you're

783
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:34,239
Speaker 1: just pinned to the floor. Uh, you want to simulate

784
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 1: something within the realm of one G or one of

785
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: these fractions of one g that seemed like they might

786
00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: be a tolerable living environment or at least help offset

787
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: some of the effects of micro gravity. And so you

788
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,759
Speaker 1: calculate how much force you generate towards the floor of

789
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 1: a spinning structure by multiplying the radius of the structure

790
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:57,799
Speaker 1: by the speed of the rotation squared. So your two

791
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: main variables are going to be how fast is the

792
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:04,839
Speaker 1: thing spinning around and how big is it? And since

793
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: you're multiplying these together, the bigger the structure is and

794
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:14,080
Speaker 1: the faster it rotates, the more force there is towards

795
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:17,439
Speaker 1: the floor. And unlike the problem I just mentioned about

796
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:20,160
Speaker 1: being pinned to the floor, actually mostly the problem that

797
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: we're going to experience is how to generate enough force,

798
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 1: not how not to generate too much. Alright, so we

799
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,719
Speaker 1: have the basic principle here. We've already mentioned some of

800
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,439
Speaker 1: the sci fi scenarios. But what are some specific proposals. Well,

801
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:36,400
Speaker 1: you've got some basic shapes that you could think about,

802
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:38,880
Speaker 1: and then I'll talk about how those shapes have been

803
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:41,960
Speaker 1: proposed in the history. Now, one thing you could obviously

804
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:44,440
Speaker 1: look at is something like the two thousand one space station,

805
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,240
Speaker 1: which is like a wheel. So you'd have a donut,

806
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: and inside the donut it's hollow, and people are walking

807
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: around on the outer wall of the inside of the

808
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:56,840
Speaker 1: hollow donut. This would be the torus shape or the

809
00:43:56,880 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 1: wheel shape. And we tend to gravitate towards this because

810
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,600
Speaker 1: everyone loves the wheel, like the wheel is such a

811
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: such an excellent human symbol. There, of course we want

812
00:44:06,000 --> 00:44:09,920
Speaker 1: to see it in space, uh, magnifying our glory as

813
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:13,280
Speaker 1: a species. Yeah, well, there's that. There's there's the flying saucer.

814
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:15,000
Speaker 1: You know, we love to see a wheel that way.

815
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:19,800
Speaker 1: There's the passage in Ezekiel about seeing wheels, wheels and wheels. Now,

816
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 1: there's also sort of the cylinder model right where you

817
00:44:23,320 --> 00:44:26,440
Speaker 1: you'd have the same effect where you'd be moving on

818
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:31,439
Speaker 1: the outs or the inner wall or sorry, now here

819
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 1: you'd have a similar effect where you'd be walking along

820
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,759
Speaker 1: on the inside of the outer wall of a spinning cylinder,

821
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: and that would be a lot like the effects caused

822
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: by the wheel. Another thing that's kind of interesting is

823
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 1: the idea of something like a bolus or a or

824
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: a tethered counterweight, where instead just imagine putting yourself in

825
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:55,200
Speaker 1: a box and then tying that box via a rope

826
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 1: to an equally weighted counterweight out in space, and then

827
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:03,120
Speaker 1: you just the two of you rotating against one another.

828
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: This would also generate a force toward the outer floor

829
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,240
Speaker 1: of the box. The you know, the wall facing away

830
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: from the rope would become the floor. Okay, it's less elegant.

831
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:15,279
Speaker 1: And the other thing about it is that it is

832
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:19,160
Speaker 1: called a bolus, which brings to mind various things, uh,

833
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: flying out of either orifice. Right, so you're saying, like,

834
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 1: if you had to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a fellow,

835
00:45:26,000 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: ask or not, they might cough up a bolus of

836
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: food they've been choking on. Or you're reading, well, you're

837
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: in the bullus. Yeah, And then of course I've also read, uh,

838
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 1: I think I've read in like space manuals about uh

839
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 1: using the toilet in space, they refer to the fecal bolus.

840
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: So the less you have to think about the fecal

841
00:45:46,000 --> 00:45:48,960
Speaker 1: bolus or the traditional you know, bolus of food that

842
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:53,520
Speaker 1: you're your your your tongue helps form before you swallow. Yeah,

843
00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: you don't want to think about that when you're spinning

844
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: around in a capsule in space. No, you don't, Robert, No,

845
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 1: you don't at all. Okay, So let's look at some

846
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:06,600
Speaker 1: specific examples of proposals for for spinning artificial gravity stations

847
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 1: in spacecraft throughout the years. And here I'm gonna cite

848
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:12,919
Speaker 1: a lot from a specific chapter from that same book

849
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:15,360
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier about artificial gravity. This would be the

850
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 1: chapter on the history of artificial gravity, and that's again

851
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: in that book by uh by Clement, Bookley, and Pulaski.

852
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: So one of the earliest known designs for a space

853
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:29,400
Speaker 1: station with artificial gravity created by rotation comes from the

854
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: Russian physicist Konstantin L. Tilkowsky, who lived from eighteen fifty

855
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 1: seven and nineteen thirty five. And Tilkowsky was an interesting dude.

856
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: He was one of the pioneers of rocketry theory, but

857
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: he also was one of those futurists, right. He was

858
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: one of these people who became obsessed with the idea

859
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 1: of colonizing space. He wanted humans to colonize space. He

860
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 1: wanted earth domination of the galactic neighborhood. And one interesting

861
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,840
Speaker 1: story I found is that he at one point built

862
00:46:57,920 --> 00:47:01,560
Speaker 1: a big centrifuge to who test out the effects of

863
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 1: acceleration or artificial gravity on the human body. But he

864
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:08,360
Speaker 1: didn't use human test subjects. He tested it on chickens

865
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: and made the gravity chickens rest in peace anyway. In

866
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: his manuscript the title, which translates to free space in

867
00:47:16,200 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three, Tiolkowski sketched a hypothetical spacecraft and designed

868
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,320
Speaker 1: how you could spin a spaceship to give it artificial

869
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,799
Speaker 1: gravity on the outward facing walls. Another pioneer who would

870
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 1: be Sergey kral V, one of the great minds behind

871
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:34,399
Speaker 1: the Soviet space program. He was a really ambitious guy,

872
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 1: and in nineteen fifty nine he was designing a trip

873
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:42,600
Speaker 1: to Mars in nineteen fifty nine via a spacecraft called

874
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 1: the Heavy Interplanetary Manned Vehicle. And no, this was nineteen

875
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 1: fifty nine. This was before Urikagarin's first space flight in

876
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one. No human had been to space at

877
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,319
Speaker 1: this point. And this guy's like, all right, we gotta

878
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:59,480
Speaker 1: get this Mars trip on the road. Um, And anyway,

879
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: this the spaceship that he was designing, the h I

880
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:06,640
Speaker 1: m V. It would have a mass of seventy five tons,

881
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: a length of twelve meters, and it would have this

882
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:14,319
Speaker 1: cabin that was six meters in diameter. That's not a

883
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: whole lot, but he he did imagine that he would

884
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: be able to use this ship as a rotating artificial

885
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: gravity environment. Um we can talk later about exactly how

886
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 1: feasible very small rotating artificial gravity environments are. The short

887
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:34,160
Speaker 1: answer is not very um. So, coral Lev's dreams were

888
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: severely limited by material and political constraints, and during the

889
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:41,600
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties he was forced to focus more on attempting

890
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: to sort of match Apollo scale space projects UH and

891
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:48,680
Speaker 1: to work on weapons programs, of course, and so he

892
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: also ended up proposing a tethered capsule based artificial gravity experiment,

893
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:56,839
Speaker 1: but it was never carried out, and coral Lev died

894
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six and the project was shut down.

895
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: What I mentioned this this tether system, the bolus, Right,

896
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: You have two things attached by a tether and you

897
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:07,799
Speaker 1: rotate them against one another to see if you can

898
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,280
Speaker 1: generate a force. That kind of system was actually tried

899
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: in space by the Americans. Now, if you'd asked me

900
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago, I think I would have thought

901
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: that the nobody had ever carried out large scale artificial

902
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:23,280
Speaker 1: gravity experiments on or at least on the human scale

903
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: in space. I know they you know, they've centerfuged a

904
00:49:26,080 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: few small animals and little contraptions, but I did not

905
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:32,840
Speaker 1: know there had ever been anything on the human scale.

906
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:37,680
Speaker 1: This experiment may count though it's it's a pretty weak attempt,

907
00:49:37,760 --> 00:49:40,239
Speaker 1: but it wasn't attempt. I don't mean to say weak,

908
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:42,839
Speaker 1: like these astronauts and scientists didn't know what they were doing,

909
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:45,680
Speaker 1: but they didn't attempt all that much in terms of

910
00:49:45,719 --> 00:49:48,680
Speaker 1: artificial gravity, right, I mean, it has will become clear

911
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:50,719
Speaker 1: as you explain it. It's still like anything you do

912
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:55,319
Speaker 1: in orbit is pretty balls. Yeah. So this this definitely qualifies,

913
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:57,840
Speaker 1: but to your point in m it's not exactly a

914
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: robust exploration. Yeah. So this this is the Bullus method

915
00:50:02,320 --> 00:50:04,359
Speaker 1: and it was tested to a to a very small

916
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 1: extent during the Gemini eleven mission in nineteen sixty six,

917
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,080
Speaker 1: or as the people at the time would say, jiminy,

918
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: and it was crewed by Charles Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon,

919
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: and while in orbit around the Earth, the Gemini spacecraft

920
00:50:19,840 --> 00:50:23,360
Speaker 1: was attached to a heavy counterweight object called the Agena

921
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 1: Target Vehicle by h and that Agena target vehicle had

922
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:31,560
Speaker 1: on it a thirty meter tether. Now, at the time,

923
00:50:31,600 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 1: we didn't have these really good complicated robotic arms or

924
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 1: auto locking cable jacks. To get these two objects connected

925
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: via the tether, Richard Gordon, the crew member, had to

926
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: leave the cabin in a space suit and attached the

927
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 1: tether manually, and apparently this job was grueling. Gordon got

928
00:50:50,120 --> 00:50:53,080
Speaker 1: so overexerted doing it that his life support system was

929
00:50:53,080 --> 00:50:55,600
Speaker 1: stressed and he was sweating so much inside his space

930
00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 1: suit that he couldn't see out of his right eye.

931
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:00,360
Speaker 1: Oh man, because I imagine it's just kind of like

932
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:05,520
Speaker 1: pulling up puddling up right, exactly like the dripping off

933
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:08,480
Speaker 1: the frozen in the lake at the bottom of Dante's Inferno,

934
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 1: you know, Oh oh man, Yeah, wow, I never thought about.

935
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 1: I had really not thought about, like the sweating in

936
00:51:16,680 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: space and blinding yourself with your own tears horrible. But anyway, yes,

937
00:51:21,160 --> 00:51:24,400
Speaker 1: sweating so much he blinded himself in his right eye. Anyway,

938
00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: he did manage to get the two spacecraft attached by

939
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:30,440
Speaker 1: the tether. He got back inside the Gemini cabin and

940
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,760
Speaker 1: they were able to close the hatch and repressurize. Later

941
00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: after they were connected via the tether, the two spacecraft

942
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 1: undocked from one another, so they disconnected except for the tether,

943
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: and then they stretched out and pulled the tether taut

944
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 1: and they began a rotation movement. And apparently it was

945
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:50,799
Speaker 1: hard to get this stable because they were what they

946
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,960
Speaker 1: called oscillations. I imagine that's like the tether being taught

947
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: but then loosening maybe or moving side to side. Um,

948
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,080
Speaker 1: there were ascilly sins in the rotation and for the

949
00:52:02,120 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 1: first twenty minutes or so, and then after that the

950
00:52:05,320 --> 00:52:09,840
Speaker 1: rotation rate was was increased, and the crew successfully managed

951
00:52:09,880 --> 00:52:13,440
Speaker 1: to generate a tiny artificial gravity effect inside the Gemini

952
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,880
Speaker 1: eleven capsule. Uh. Supposedly, one way they measured this is

953
00:52:16,920 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: somebody dropped a camera and it went in a straight

954
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:22,160
Speaker 1: line toward the floor, toward the outside wall of the

955
00:52:22,200 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 1: capsule that was away from where the tether was. So

956
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:27,960
Speaker 1: they measured it and figured that they had generated about

957
00:52:28,280 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: zero point zero zero zero five G. And but that

958
00:52:33,160 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 1: was with zero point fifteen revolutions per minute, So this

959
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: is a very slow rotation. It's not a huge construct. Um. So,

960
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:43,440
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a reasonable thing to generate if they

961
00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 1: had been rotating faster, or if the tether had been longer,

962
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:50,439
Speaker 1: they might have been able to to create a more

963
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: powerful effect. But anyway, this did prove the principle and

964
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:56,640
Speaker 1: afterwards the tether was released and the edge in a

965
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:00,200
Speaker 1: vehicle was dropped to its orbital fate after about three hours.

966
00:53:00,880 --> 00:53:04,360
Speaker 1: Now moving on, the author's also talk about how in

967
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: nineteen eight there was this Slovene engineer named Herman Potasnik,

968
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: writing under the pseudonym Herman Nerdung, who proposed a wheel

969
00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:17,240
Speaker 1: shaped space station with habitation around the rim of the wheel.

970
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 1: And his idea was that you'd have this wheel that

971
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:21,560
Speaker 1: people would live in, and then the hub of the

972
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,879
Speaker 1: wheel you'd have a power generating station. And this would

973
00:53:24,880 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: have been thirty meters in diameter. It was called the

974
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 1: one rod or living wheel. And then in nineteen fifty

975
00:53:32,200 --> 00:53:35,879
Speaker 1: three in Collier's Weekly, the German American rocket scientists Werner

976
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:40,600
Speaker 1: von Braun took this wheel shaped model and updated it

977
00:53:40,640 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 1: to be larger with a seventy six meter diameter. And

978
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:47,000
Speaker 1: von Braun calculated that if you had a wheel seventy

979
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:50,720
Speaker 1: six ms wide and it rotated at three revolutions per minute,

980
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 1: you could simulate a gravity of zero point three G,

981
00:53:53,800 --> 00:53:56,120
Speaker 1: which is sort of close to the gravity of Mars,

982
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: which is zero point three a G. And this would

983
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 1: make it suppose is a good training facility from ours expeditions,

984
00:54:03,160 --> 00:54:05,879
Speaker 1: but also, as we were talking about earlier, might be

985
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:10,200
Speaker 1: within livable tolerances for human life. You know, if if

986
00:54:10,239 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: that's the best you could do in space, that might

987
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 1: still be better than micro gravity, better than nothing at all, right,

988
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 1: I mean, without without like actually doing any math on this,

989
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:22,560
Speaker 1: if you could make it to wear a really rigorous

990
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:27,240
Speaker 1: exercise regime for your space faring human if it allowed

991
00:54:27,280 --> 00:54:31,560
Speaker 1: them to like could cleanly break even against you know,

992
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:34,920
Speaker 1: loss to to bone and muscle, then it would be

993
00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: worth it, right, right. I mean, I'd imagine three hours

994
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:40,759
Speaker 1: of exercise a day and zero point three G does

995
00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:43,040
Speaker 1: a lot more work than three hours of exercise a

996
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 1: day and zero G. Yeah. And on top of that,

997
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: you're getting acclimatized to the gravity that you're headed towards totally. Yeah.

998
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 1: And so there have also been some really interesting proposed

999
00:54:52,719 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: odd models, like in nineteen sixty four, Dandridge Cole and

1000
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:00,439
Speaker 1: Donald Cox proposed this interesting idea. So Cole was really

1001
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: interested in the mining and colonization of asteroids. And one

1002
00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: of his proposed ideas was that you'd capture a large

1003
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 1: asteroid to be about thirty kilometers in length, that ideally

1004
00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 1: to be an elliptical asteroid, kind of egg shaped, and

1005
00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:16,239
Speaker 1: you'd hollow out the inside of it, and then you

1006
00:55:16,239 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 1: would use propulsion to get the asteroid rotating along its

1007
00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 1: major axis, and this would generate artificial gravity inside the

1008
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: hollowed out asteroid, and you could sort of build a

1009
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: bubble city on the inside walls of the hollow space rocks,

1010
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: sustained by shining sunlight into the core with mirrors. This

1011
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,239
Speaker 1: was also explored on the Expanse. By the way they

1012
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,960
Speaker 1: talk about colon cox Um. I don't remember if they

1013
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,520
Speaker 1: if they actually referenced them in any way, but there's

1014
00:55:45,960 --> 00:55:49,760
Speaker 1: they discussed, like the the early efforts to reach these

1015
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 1: various asteroids and to create a spin mine amount get

1016
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: them spinning and then you can build habitats inside them.

1017
00:55:57,080 --> 00:55:58,719
Speaker 1: Did it work or not work? I mean in the

1018
00:55:59,120 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: knovel work. Okay, the only thing that didn't work in

1019
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,000
Speaker 1: the novels was the colonization of Venus, like that ended

1020
00:56:06,080 --> 00:56:09,960
Speaker 1: up failing. They're trying to create like floating cities. Yeah,

1021
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:13,800
Speaker 1: but anyway, Elsman, that could go really bad. Well anyway,

1022
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: so yeah, another weird idea this, Well it's actually maybe

1023
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:19,480
Speaker 1: not that weird because here you get something like it.

1024
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,960
Speaker 1: In two thousand one of Space Odyssey would be a sphere.

1025
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:27,000
Speaker 1: So the American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill proposed a rotating

1026
00:56:27,040 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 1: sphere that he called Island one and this would be

1027
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:34,160
Speaker 1: five in diameter, would rotate once every thirty seconds, which

1028
00:56:34,200 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: he said would generate about one earth G at the equator.

1029
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 1: Now that's an important thing to consider a rotating sphere.

1030
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:43,360
Speaker 1: It would be different than a rotating wheel, and that

1031
00:56:43,440 --> 00:56:46,040
Speaker 1: there'd be areas you could access that would not have

1032
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: the same gravity. Right Like, if if you go to

1033
00:56:49,640 --> 00:56:52,560
Speaker 1: the equator, you'd get your maximum gravity, but then if

1034
00:56:52,600 --> 00:56:55,280
Speaker 1: you walk up to the poles of the rotating sphere,

1035
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:59,480
Speaker 1: you'd basically be waitless because it wouldn't be a like

1036
00:56:59,520 --> 00:57:02,440
Speaker 1: a Hall Earth scenario where you would ideally have like

1037
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:05,800
Speaker 1: the mass of the crust. Like the mass it's not

1038
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:07,480
Speaker 1: going to play a part in this, So yeah, you

1039
00:57:07,480 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 1: would you would only experience the the maximum g's at

1040
00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:16,800
Speaker 1: that equator. Because again it's not actually due to gravity.

1041
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: It's due to acceleration. R. It's due to your inertia

1042
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: against the constant angular acceleration of the rotating reference frame.

1043
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:29,080
Speaker 1: Later that same guy, Gerard O'Neill, he proposed a larger

1044
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:32,920
Speaker 1: model he called Island two and eventually this gigantic aluminum

1045
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:35,560
Speaker 1: structure that came to be known as the O'Neill cylinder.

1046
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: And this would end up measuring more than thirty kilometers

1047
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:43,040
Speaker 1: long and three point two kilometers in radius. And you

1048
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 1: do this by rotating a little over once every two minutes,

1049
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: which could create earth gravity around the inside edges of

1050
00:57:50,840 --> 00:57:53,960
Speaker 1: the cylinder. And he envisioned this model would actually it

1051
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:56,440
Speaker 1: would be like an Earth in space. It would contain

1052
00:57:56,560 --> 00:58:01,720
Speaker 1: natural landscapes that have forests and rivers and individual illages within. Yeah,

1053
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 1: you'd have sunlight directed inside from external mirrors. I mean

1054
00:58:06,280 --> 00:58:09,600
Speaker 1: crazy stuff that there's a he had a book book,

1055
00:58:09,600 --> 00:58:13,480
Speaker 1: The High Frontier Human Colonies in Space, and the illustrations

1056
00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: from this are just magnificent. I know you included one

1057
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:18,640
Speaker 1: in in our notes for this this episode. Not trying

1058
00:58:18,640 --> 00:58:21,040
Speaker 1: to include some on the landing page for this episode

1059
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. Because these

1060
00:58:22,640 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: are just gorgeous, gorgeous sci fi illustrations that really capture

1061
00:58:28,360 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 1: that sort of retro optimism for humanity's future beyond Earth.

1062
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:35,920
Speaker 1: Why they kind of make me think of like Broigel

1063
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:39,200
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's these

1064
00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:43,320
Speaker 1: just landscapes, you know, turned on their side and looped

1065
00:58:43,360 --> 00:58:48,240
Speaker 1: together to create this uh this this this internal rotating world. Yeah.

1066
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:51,160
Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure why, but this one illustration we've

1067
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:55,920
Speaker 1: got included here, it reminds me of U. Broigel's landscape

1068
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:59,560
Speaker 1: at the Fall of Icarus. Though I don't think you're

1069
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 1: to invoke chorus when contemplating such titanic feats of human achievement,

1070
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 1: and with so many lives at stake, it is a

1071
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 1: temptation of the gods to call down uh misfortune on

1072
00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:18,480
Speaker 1: our hubris. And I mentioned the lives involved, because, for instance,

1073
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: in in O'Neill's Island one here he's talking about tens

1074
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 1: of thousands of people living inside there and uh, you know,

1075
00:59:24,600 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 1: a living there out their planet free lives and a

1076
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: technological uh simulacrum of their home world environment. Anyway, you'll

1077
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:34,680
Speaker 1: have to you have to look at the images that

1078
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:38,120
Speaker 1: truly beautiful stuff totally and you can see in the

1079
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:40,600
Speaker 1: images that, like the idea for the hollow asteroid, this

1080
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: would use huge windows and mirrors to shine sunlight inside

1081
00:59:44,120 --> 00:59:46,400
Speaker 1: for night and day cycles, which would be another thing

1082
00:59:46,400 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: that would be absolutely crucial if you're trying to fully

1083
00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:53,680
Speaker 1: simulate an Earth environment. Now, I guess it's finally time

1084
00:59:53,720 --> 00:59:56,320
Speaker 1: to talk about probably the favorite model, the thing that

1085
00:59:56,360 --> 01:00:00,600
Speaker 1: everybody usually goes to, which is the Taurus. Yes it's

1086
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: the standard. Yes, it is the standard, and it is

1087
01:00:04,640 --> 01:00:08,440
Speaker 1: the standard from Stanford, the Stanford Taurus. So this is

1088
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:11,320
Speaker 1: really the answer to what's most feasible, or at least

1089
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:15,200
Speaker 1: what scientists have concluded in the past. So in nine five,

1090
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:18,680
Speaker 1: NASA and the American Society for Engineering Education put together

1091
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:22,720
Speaker 1: a study comparing submitted designs for spacecraft habitats, and this

1092
01:00:22,800 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: was published by Johnson and Holbrow in nineteen and it

1093
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 1: looked at wheel shaped design, cylinder design, spherical designs, and

1094
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:34,560
Speaker 1: NASA ultimately decided that a design submitted by Stanford students

1095
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:36,960
Speaker 1: was the most feasible, and this was the design that

1096
01:00:37,000 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Stanford Taurus. So it

1097
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:41,800
Speaker 1: Taurus is like we've been saying a ring, it's a

1098
01:00:41,800 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: hollow doughnut, and the Stanford Taurus would be a ring

1099
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:48,920
Speaker 1: shaped tube. So it's a tube like a cylinder, except

1100
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:50,840
Speaker 1: it's a tube that goes around in a circle and

1101
01:00:50,840 --> 01:00:54,280
Speaker 1: connects on itself a hollow donut. And so inside that

1102
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:57,840
Speaker 1: tube it would be a hundred and thirty meters across.

1103
01:00:57,920 --> 01:01:00,440
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind that's not the diameter of whole

1104
01:01:00,720 --> 01:01:04,480
Speaker 1: ring that's inside the tube that makes the ring, but

1105
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:07,919
Speaker 1: the diameter of the whole thing would be about one

1106
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: point eight kilometers across, and then it would be the

1107
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 1: two would be about five point six kilometers long. So

1108
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:17,919
Speaker 1: that would be the circumference and spinning the ring at

1109
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 1: one revolution per minute at these dimensions, it would generate

1110
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 1: about one G along the outer edge of the tube

1111
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:28,120
Speaker 1: or earth gravity, and so feasibly you could build whole

1112
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 1: earth environments inside, like the O'Neill cylinder. If this were built,

1113
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,840
Speaker 1: you could supposedly have running water, farms, woods, all that

1114
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:39,760
Speaker 1: kind of stuff to make a space habitat as lovely

1115
01:01:39,840 --> 01:01:42,920
Speaker 1: and wonderful as our natural earth habitat. And in the

1116
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:46,480
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and seventies, NASA did investigate ideas for creating

1117
01:01:46,560 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 1: artificial gravity environments for upcoming space missions. There's one illustration

1118
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:53,400
Speaker 1: I found that I thought was pretty cool. I I

1119
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:55,439
Speaker 1: don't know what the name of this is. I don't

1120
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:56,840
Speaker 1: know if it had a name. I'm calling it the

1121
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:01,320
Speaker 1: Rod because it's also a rotating a station. But it's

1122
01:02:01,360 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: just a big rod. Now it's not rotating. It's not rotating,

1123
01:02:06,160 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 1: you know, like rolling as a rod. It's spinning, spinning baton,

1124
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:14,520
Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. So in nineteen sixty nine,

1125
01:02:14,560 --> 01:02:17,080
Speaker 1: the U. S Space Agency concept drawing for for this

1126
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,760
Speaker 1: space station was produced. And I think it's an interesting concept,

1127
01:02:20,800 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 1: but obviously has you know, so it's got less material

1128
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,440
Speaker 1: investment than the construction of a huge wheel. But I

1129
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 1: would imagine it also has drawbacks. Like the farther you

1130
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:33,919
Speaker 1: farther along you are towards the ends of the rod,

1131
01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:37,960
Speaker 1: the more gravity you experience, right, because gravity is a

1132
01:02:37,960 --> 01:02:41,080
Speaker 1: product of the speed of the rotation and the radius,

1133
01:02:41,200 --> 01:02:44,320
Speaker 1: And so as you go toward the center of the rod,

1134
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:47,240
Speaker 1: you're shortening your radius, and as you go toward the

1135
01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:50,800
Speaker 1: outside of the rod, you're lengthening your radius, and so

1136
01:02:50,960 --> 01:02:54,040
Speaker 1: at the center you'd be waitless. So I can imagine

1137
01:02:54,040 --> 01:02:56,040
Speaker 1: maybe something like this would be a system where the

1138
01:02:56,200 --> 01:02:59,200
Speaker 1: end compartments are again the places you go for your

1139
01:02:59,240 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 1: daily workouts in Earth gravity, the habitable zones really, yeah,

1140
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 1: to keep your your muscles and bones strong. And then

1141
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:07,880
Speaker 1: the lower gravity environments would be I guess where you

1142
01:03:08,000 --> 01:03:10,640
Speaker 1: do other things. Maybe you sleep there, you know, I

1143
01:03:10,640 --> 01:03:13,920
Speaker 1: don't know, store stuff there or something like that. Or

1144
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:15,680
Speaker 1: it's just where the captain gets to live, you know.

1145
01:03:15,840 --> 01:03:18,800
Speaker 1: Everyone else has to float and deal with it. Yeah,

1146
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 1: And and this does draw on conceptually something that we

1147
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:24,120
Speaker 1: see in science fiction a lot of the time, which

1148
01:03:24,160 --> 01:03:27,680
Speaker 1: is that maybe not the entire habitable portion of the

1149
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 1: of a spacecraft has artificial gravity. Maybe much of it

1150
01:03:31,720 --> 01:03:33,600
Speaker 1: is going to be a micro gravity environment where you're

1151
01:03:33,600 --> 01:03:36,680
Speaker 1: floating around, but there's like one room that's a rotating

1152
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:40,440
Speaker 1: drum or taurists or something that you can go into

1153
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:44,560
Speaker 1: and there's artificial gravity and that one contained environment. Yeah. Now,

1154
01:03:44,600 --> 01:03:49,320
Speaker 1: in in Peter Watt's blind Side, if I remember correctly, here,

1155
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:52,280
Speaker 1: there are portions of the ship that have artificial gravity

1156
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:56,520
Speaker 1: via spin, but they're also working in even sweeping in

1157
01:03:56,640 --> 01:04:00,080
Speaker 1: the zero gravity area. I think so, yeah, I think so.

1158
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:03,520
Speaker 1: I think most of the ship, uh, if I recall,

1159
01:04:03,760 --> 01:04:05,920
Speaker 1: is going to be a zero gy environment where you're

1160
01:04:05,920 --> 01:04:08,680
Speaker 1: floating around, you have to propel yourself, and then there's

1161
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:11,040
Speaker 1: one portion of the ship known as the drum that's

1162
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:14,560
Speaker 1: the gravity environment. So there have been a lot of

1163
01:04:14,560 --> 01:04:18,000
Speaker 1: these propositions over the years. You know, NASA's looked at

1164
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:20,640
Speaker 1: how to create space stations like this, but ultimately these

1165
01:04:20,640 --> 01:04:25,200
Speaker 1: designs would be extremely expensive to produce and difficult to

1166
01:04:25,240 --> 01:04:29,000
Speaker 1: execute a little bit more on that later. But another

1167
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 1: factor is that you know, NASA's scientists are looking at

1168
01:04:32,640 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 1: this and they're saying, well, a lot of the experiments

1169
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:39,560
Speaker 1: we want to carry out or microgravity experiments anyway. Right,

1170
01:04:39,640 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 1: So I don't know, do do we really need to

1171
01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:46,040
Speaker 1: spend all this money making the International Space Station UH

1172
01:04:46,040 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 1: an artificial gravity environment when people aren't going to be

1173
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:50,680
Speaker 1: spending their whole lives there. They're just gonna be there

1174
01:04:50,680 --> 01:04:52,439
Speaker 1: for a short period of time and then they're gonna

1175
01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:54,800
Speaker 1: come back and they'll be able to recover some of

1176
01:04:54,840 --> 01:04:57,280
Speaker 1: the negative health effects. Yeah, I mean noticed to two

1177
01:04:57,280 --> 01:04:59,360
Speaker 1: of the main points wrapped up in that we don't

1178
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:03,600
Speaker 1: really need need um artificial gravity right now, not based

1179
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:06,800
Speaker 1: on what we're currently doing. Yeah, and we're still there's

1180
01:05:06,800 --> 01:05:08,720
Speaker 1: still so much to learn about the effects of micro

1181
01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:12,480
Speaker 1: gravity on organisms right now, there's also still a lot

1182
01:05:12,520 --> 01:05:17,160
Speaker 1: to learn about the effects of artificial gravity on organisms. Now,

1183
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:21,360
Speaker 1: if that's with the qualification, it's taught. What you're talking

1184
01:05:21,360 --> 01:05:26,400
Speaker 1: about there is the specific effects of centrifugal artificial gravity,

1185
01:05:26,440 --> 01:05:28,480
Speaker 1: because those are going to be somewhat different than just

1186
01:05:28,600 --> 01:05:32,320
Speaker 1: a pure, say, linear acceleration type artificial gravity that's going

1187
01:05:32,360 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: to be mostly indistinguishable from earth um in centrifugal environments,

1188
01:05:37,440 --> 01:05:40,640
Speaker 1: if you're in a spinning environment, depending on how small

1189
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 1: the radius is and how fast you're spinning, it could

1190
01:05:44,600 --> 01:05:47,200
Speaker 1: have weird effects. And I'll talk about those complications in

1191
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,400
Speaker 1: a minute. But so to study those weird effects, scientists

1192
01:05:50,400 --> 01:05:55,240
Speaker 1: have conducted uh experiments on animals like fish, rats, turtles,

1193
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:59,640
Speaker 1: and generally animals seem to survive centerfuging in space just fine,

1194
01:05:59,720 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 1: though in systems with a very high rotation rate, rats

1195
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: seem to have a problem with orientation, movement, and vestibular

1196
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:11,280
Speaker 1: and motor coordination. So it's not a big surprise. But

1197
01:06:11,320 --> 01:06:13,920
Speaker 1: if you put them in a rotating centerfuge with a

1198
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:17,480
Speaker 1: small radius and very fast rotation, you get some very

1199
01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:21,760
Speaker 1: dizzy and confused and uncomfortable rats. But on the plus side,

1200
01:06:21,800 --> 01:06:24,960
Speaker 1: the centerfuging process does appear to stave off the wasting

1201
01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:27,240
Speaker 1: effects of zero G. So if you put animals in

1202
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:29,960
Speaker 1: a centerfuge like this, their bones and muscles do appear

1203
01:06:29,960 --> 01:06:33,040
Speaker 1: to stay strong. Now, just to turn to one more

1204
01:06:33,080 --> 01:06:37,000
Speaker 1: recent proposition of an artificial gravity spacecraft, h I thought

1205
01:06:37,040 --> 01:06:39,360
Speaker 1: we should look at real quick at the Nautilus X.

1206
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:42,200
Speaker 1: Apparently this is also the name of some vaping product,

1207
01:06:42,320 --> 01:06:44,520
Speaker 1: which is most of what the Google results are about,

1208
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:47,920
Speaker 1: So God help us there. But uh, the Nautilus X

1209
01:06:48,000 --> 01:06:52,280
Speaker 1: was a proposed NASA spacecraft that would contain a rotating centerfuge.

1210
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: It would have a torus ring that was built to

1211
01:06:55,040 --> 01:06:58,360
Speaker 1: simulate partial Earth G for the habitable quarters. And the

1212
01:06:58,480 --> 01:07:01,440
Speaker 1: spacecraft was designed but never built, and you can look

1213
01:07:01,520 --> 01:07:03,960
Speaker 1: up images of the design on the internet. It's kind

1214
01:07:03,960 --> 01:07:06,120
Speaker 1: of interesting to see. I think the idea is that

1215
01:07:06,760 --> 01:07:09,160
Speaker 1: part of it here would have this hollow doughnut that

1216
01:07:09,240 --> 01:07:11,960
Speaker 1: would be rotating and you could you could transfer its

1217
01:07:12,000 --> 01:07:15,400
Speaker 1: momentum to a flywheel and uh, and so it'd be

1218
01:07:15,480 --> 01:07:18,160
Speaker 1: rotating around the ship and you could get in there

1219
01:07:18,200 --> 01:07:21,000
Speaker 1: to have some gravity time. And there have also been

1220
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:23,280
Speaker 1: plenty of proposals over the years to add a centerfugure

1221
01:07:23,320 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: to the I S S in order to test artificial gravity.

1222
01:07:26,240 --> 01:07:28,560
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, I don't think anything

1223
01:07:28,600 --> 01:07:30,960
Speaker 1: like that is still on the runway right now. I

1224
01:07:31,000 --> 01:07:33,480
Speaker 1: think these plans have pretty much stalled out. I don't

1225
01:07:33,480 --> 01:07:36,080
Speaker 1: know if you were able to across anything, but yeah,

1226
01:07:36,120 --> 01:07:38,560
Speaker 1: that was it seemed actually active right now. Yeah, but

1227
01:07:38,800 --> 01:07:40,640
Speaker 1: there may be hope. So I don't know if you're

1228
01:07:40,640 --> 01:07:42,280
Speaker 1: out there working on a center fugure for the I

1229
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:43,960
Speaker 1: S S and you think it might one day get

1230
01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 1: up there, let us know. Well, you know, the turbo

1231
01:07:46,200 --> 01:07:50,680
Speaker 1: lift that I mentioned, like that news of it being funded,

1232
01:07:50,800 --> 01:07:54,760
Speaker 1: that's just this year. So it's possible that there's some

1233
01:07:54,840 --> 01:07:59,600
Speaker 1: additional initiatives that have been funded in the past couple

1234
01:07:59,640 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 1: of months. I hope they're not in competition. Would it

1235
01:08:02,520 --> 01:08:06,280
Speaker 1: be turbo latter versus centerfuge. It sounds like a great battle,

1236
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:10,840
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Now. I've mentioned several times the possible

1237
01:08:10,880 --> 01:08:14,600
Speaker 1: complications of a spinning artificial gravity environment, right you can

1238
01:08:14,680 --> 01:08:17,879
Speaker 1: sort of imagine that there might be some that's spinning

1239
01:08:17,920 --> 01:08:20,240
Speaker 1: around in a circle towards the floor. Is not going

1240
01:08:20,240 --> 01:08:24,400
Speaker 1: to be exactly the same as having a gravitational force

1241
01:08:24,479 --> 01:08:27,320
Speaker 1: pulling you toward the ground. It It might in most cases,

1242
01:08:27,400 --> 01:08:30,160
Speaker 1: or depending on the radius and the rotation rate, be

1243
01:08:30,600 --> 01:08:35,080
Speaker 1: mostly indistinguishable, but especially at smaller scales, there are going

1244
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:39,080
Speaker 1: to be some weird complications. This is gonna be the

1245
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:45,280
Speaker 1: frozen from concentrate orange juice version of fresh orange juice. Yep,

1246
01:08:46,479 --> 01:08:50,679
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about the Coriolis force. So, Robert,

1247
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:54,639
Speaker 1: imagine you're on a ferris wheel. You at home as well.

1248
01:08:54,800 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: Imagine you're up there. You're in the car on the

1249
01:08:57,240 --> 01:08:59,759
Speaker 1: ferris wheel, and you're just coming up over the top

1250
01:08:59,800 --> 01:09:02,880
Speaker 1: of the ferris wheel, and you notice that a friend

1251
01:09:02,880 --> 01:09:05,840
Speaker 1: of yours is directly below you, and you want to

1252
01:09:05,880 --> 01:09:09,479
Speaker 1: pour some mountain dew on their head, so you pour away.

1253
01:09:09,600 --> 01:09:11,920
Speaker 1: You pour the mountain dew to hit your friend, but

1254
01:09:12,520 --> 01:09:15,720
Speaker 1: you miss, and the dew instead hits the people in

1255
01:09:15,760 --> 01:09:19,400
Speaker 1: the car directly behind your friend. And this really shouldn't

1256
01:09:19,439 --> 01:09:22,760
Speaker 1: surprise anybody, right, this is just duh. I mean, you're

1257
01:09:22,760 --> 01:09:26,400
Speaker 1: on a ferris wheel. Even though your friend was directly

1258
01:09:26,439 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 1: below you. When you began pouring the liquid straight straight down,

1259
01:09:30,320 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 1: the wheel was in motion, and by the time the

1260
01:09:32,439 --> 01:09:35,400
Speaker 1: liquid fell and reached the bottom. Your friend had moved

1261
01:09:35,439 --> 01:09:38,599
Speaker 1: out of the way, and somebody else had moved in. Now,

1262
01:09:38,760 --> 01:09:41,960
Speaker 1: this is totally normal, totally intuitive physics on a ferris

1263
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:45,599
Speaker 1: wheel because we're generally looking at a ferris wheel from

1264
01:09:45,640 --> 01:09:50,160
Speaker 1: the outside. But if you try to imagine riding a

1265
01:09:50,280 --> 01:09:53,799
Speaker 1: rotating machine like a ferris wheel around in a circle

1266
01:09:54,080 --> 01:09:59,160
Speaker 1: in zero G in a closed environment, the rotation becomes

1267
01:09:59,200 --> 01:10:04,280
Speaker 1: your new stationary reference frame you the The whole idea

1268
01:10:04,320 --> 01:10:06,360
Speaker 1: is that you're supposed to be able to forget that

1269
01:10:06,400 --> 01:10:10,080
Speaker 1: you're rotating, and instead of feeling rotation, just feel a

1270
01:10:10,160 --> 01:10:14,160
Speaker 1: pull toward the floor. Like. Notice how even though your

1271
01:10:14,240 --> 01:10:17,360
Speaker 1: section of the Earth is orbiting the Sun and rotating

1272
01:10:17,360 --> 01:10:21,120
Speaker 1: around the Earth's axis, everything seems perfectly still. Right, this

1273
01:10:21,200 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 1: is your inertial reference frame, And since everything around you

1274
01:10:24,280 --> 01:10:26,679
Speaker 1: is moving it roughly the same speed in the same direction,

1275
01:10:26,720 --> 01:10:30,599
Speaker 1: everything feels like it's holding still. And the same thing

1276
01:10:30,600 --> 01:10:34,200
Speaker 1: could happen inside a closed environment rotating into constant speed

1277
01:10:34,240 --> 01:10:37,439
Speaker 1: in direction in space, and so then the exact same

1278
01:10:37,479 --> 01:10:40,360
Speaker 1: trajectory we saw with pouring the liquid down from the

1279
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:42,880
Speaker 1: top to the bottom of the ferris wheel still applies.

1280
01:10:43,400 --> 01:10:45,960
Speaker 1: But because we're not looking in from the outside, it

1281
01:10:46,040 --> 01:10:49,479
Speaker 1: starts to look super odd, Like you could throw a

1282
01:10:49,520 --> 01:10:54,200
Speaker 1: packet of dehydrated space lasagna straight at somebody's face across

1283
01:10:54,320 --> 01:10:57,280
Speaker 1: the torus from or across the cylinder or whatever it

1284
01:10:57,400 --> 01:11:01,720
Speaker 1: is in this spaceship, and it would appear that even

1285
01:11:01,760 --> 01:11:04,920
Speaker 1: though you threw it straight, this thing you threw would

1286
01:11:04,960 --> 01:11:09,280
Speaker 1: suddenly arc over to the side, and so from your perspective,

1287
01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:12,479
Speaker 1: things would have this bizarre motion that wouldn't appear to

1288
01:11:12,479 --> 01:11:15,080
Speaker 1: make any sense at all unless you were looking at

1289
01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:18,479
Speaker 1: the ship from the outside. Yeah. And there's actually a

1290
01:11:18,520 --> 01:11:21,599
Speaker 1: point in blind Side where they reference this where one

1291
01:11:21,640 --> 01:11:25,120
Speaker 1: individual throws it's either it's a ball or fruit or

1292
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,559
Speaker 1: an apples. I think it's an apple, yeah yeah, and

1293
01:11:28,680 --> 01:11:31,800
Speaker 1: uh and it kind of goes wide. Yeah yeah, yeah,

1294
01:11:31,840 --> 01:11:34,240
Speaker 1: And this would be a problem. Now that might not

1295
01:11:34,280 --> 01:11:35,920
Speaker 1: be a big deal because you're like, well, how often

1296
01:11:35,960 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: do you need to throw something to somebody? Well, actually,

1297
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:40,599
Speaker 1: if you watch people in the International Space Station, they're

1298
01:11:40,600 --> 01:11:42,680
Speaker 1: sort of tossing stuff to each other a lot. Yeah,

1299
01:11:42,720 --> 01:11:45,160
Speaker 1: they're taking advantage of the microgravity. But it gets a

1300
01:11:45,160 --> 01:11:48,160
Speaker 1: lot worse than just tossing stuff to each other, because

1301
01:11:48,200 --> 01:11:51,679
Speaker 1: this also is going to affect just general movement. If

1302
01:11:51,720 --> 01:11:54,080
Speaker 1: you're at a small enough scale, like if your radius

1303
01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:56,680
Speaker 1: is small enough and your rotations are fast enough, this

1304
01:11:56,760 --> 01:11:59,280
Speaker 1: is going to be affecting how your body itself moves.

1305
01:11:59,680 --> 01:12:01,800
Speaker 1: And it's even worse when you think about how it

1306
01:12:01,800 --> 01:12:05,000
Speaker 1: could affect, like affect your internal body systems. Yeah, I

1307
01:12:05,040 --> 01:12:06,960
Speaker 1: mean you could. You could find yourself in your chamber

1308
01:12:07,040 --> 01:12:10,080
Speaker 1: and no matter how how else the rest of you

1309
01:12:10,160 --> 01:12:14,639
Speaker 1: feels about your your your artificial gravity scenario, you might

1310
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:18,439
Speaker 1: feel a bit nauseous. The coreolis effects on inner ear,

1311
01:12:18,920 --> 01:12:24,879
Speaker 1: indo limp flow and on moving limbs creates a disorientation, nausea, vomiting,

1312
01:12:24,880 --> 01:12:27,720
Speaker 1: and even can cause loss of coordination. Yeah, and this

1313
01:12:27,800 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 1: actually isn't all that hard to understand because you've probably

1314
01:12:31,000 --> 01:12:33,439
Speaker 1: experienced something like this in your life, if you've ever

1315
01:12:33,479 --> 01:12:36,519
Speaker 1: been car sick while trying to read inside a moving car.

1316
01:12:37,000 --> 01:12:39,439
Speaker 1: In both cases, what's going on is that the fluids

1317
01:12:39,479 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 1: inside your body are slashing around in directions that don't

1318
01:12:43,000 --> 01:12:46,559
Speaker 1: make sense to your eyes based on your environmental reference frame.

1319
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:49,479
Speaker 1: So in a car, you're sitting in the car, you

1320
01:12:49,479 --> 01:12:51,880
Speaker 1: don't really feel like you're moving. You just kind of

1321
01:12:51,920 --> 01:12:55,160
Speaker 1: feel like, Okay, I'm sitting here stationary in a car,

1322
01:12:55,479 --> 01:12:58,360
Speaker 1: especially if you're reading or doing something with your eyes down,

1323
01:12:58,479 --> 01:13:01,280
Speaker 1: you're not getting the information in about movement around in

1324
01:13:01,320 --> 01:13:04,599
Speaker 1: your environment. Meanwhile, the inside of your body, especially your

1325
01:13:04,600 --> 01:13:07,160
Speaker 1: inner ears, saying like whoa, we're all over the place,

1326
01:13:07,240 --> 01:13:11,280
Speaker 1: what's going on? And that discuss This discontinuity or disagreement

1327
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:14,719
Speaker 1: between the movement information supplied by your senses and felt

1328
01:13:14,720 --> 01:13:18,439
Speaker 1: by your inner ear causes this destabilizing sensation. It makes

1329
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:21,240
Speaker 1: you sick. Now. One of the issues here that we

1330
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:25,200
Speaker 1: keep coming back to is that the smaller you're rotating environment,

1331
01:13:25,680 --> 01:13:28,680
Speaker 1: the more it is actually a carnival ride, and that

1332
01:13:28,800 --> 01:13:31,760
Speaker 1: the larger it is, uh, the better chance you have

1333
01:13:31,800 --> 01:13:35,800
Speaker 1: it's smoothing some of the more undesirable effects out exactly right.

1334
01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:38,400
Speaker 1: So if you, I mean, one thing you'll notice is that, like,

1335
01:13:39,280 --> 01:13:42,920
Speaker 1: there are Coreolis effects in the rotation of the earth, right,

1336
01:13:43,000 --> 01:13:46,559
Speaker 1: but normally comes up in aviation. Yeah, if you throw

1337
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:49,519
Speaker 1: a baseball, if you are just standing around, like, the

1338
01:13:49,520 --> 01:13:51,760
Speaker 1: Coreolis effect of the rotation of the Earth is not

1339
01:13:51,960 --> 01:13:55,400
Speaker 1: messing with you too bad because the Earth is huge. Um,

1340
01:13:55,439 --> 01:13:58,960
Speaker 1: if you if you're in a much smaller rotating reference frame,

1341
01:13:59,000 --> 01:14:00,599
Speaker 1: it would be messing with you a lot more. I mean,

1342
01:14:00,600 --> 01:14:02,640
Speaker 1: mainly on Earth, you only see the rotation of the

1343
01:14:02,640 --> 01:14:06,599
Speaker 1: Earth causing Coreola's forces to affect a large scale movement

1344
01:14:06,680 --> 01:14:09,599
Speaker 1: such as like tides and weather patterns, you know, huge

1345
01:14:09,640 --> 01:14:13,320
Speaker 1: movements over long distances and long time. Yeah, and so

1346
01:14:13,400 --> 01:14:16,719
Speaker 1: the same would be generally true in an artificial gravity

1347
01:14:16,760 --> 01:14:19,280
Speaker 1: environment that was rotating, if it was a very very

1348
01:14:19,439 --> 01:14:23,160
Speaker 1: big radius and a slow rotation. In this environment, the

1349
01:14:23,200 --> 01:14:26,160
Speaker 1: Coriolis forces would be much less likely to have a

1350
01:14:26,240 --> 01:14:29,120
Speaker 1: noticeable effect on your body and on the stuff you're doing.

1351
01:14:29,600 --> 01:14:34,680
Speaker 1: Another side effect, especially of a small radius fast rotation system,

1352
01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:37,599
Speaker 1: would be in a rotating environment, you could have unequal

1353
01:14:37,640 --> 01:14:41,320
Speaker 1: gravity loading. That's about as weird as it sounds. So

1354
01:14:41,360 --> 01:14:43,880
Speaker 1: the centrifugal force you feel, like we were saying, is

1355
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:47,479
Speaker 1: partially determined by your distance from the hub. So in

1356
01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:50,280
Speaker 1: a big wheel, this isn't it's not gonna matter very much.

1357
01:14:50,360 --> 01:14:53,400
Speaker 1: You know, the percent distance from the hub between your

1358
01:14:53,400 --> 01:14:55,680
Speaker 1: head and your feet, if the hub is hundreds and

1359
01:14:55,760 --> 01:14:58,840
Speaker 1: hundreds of meters away, is just you know, it's just

1360
01:14:58,880 --> 01:15:02,040
Speaker 1: not that much. If it it's ten meters away, then

1361
01:15:02,120 --> 01:15:05,360
Speaker 1: suddenly you might start to feel a significant difference between

1362
01:15:05,400 --> 01:15:08,599
Speaker 1: the gravity affecting your feet and the gravity affecting your head,

1363
01:15:09,320 --> 01:15:11,280
Speaker 1: and this could affect it could lead to problems with

1364
01:15:11,320 --> 01:15:14,360
Speaker 1: things like circulation. But it would also just be disorienting

1365
01:15:14,439 --> 01:15:18,439
Speaker 1: and make movement difficult, partially negating the benefits of artificial gravity.

1366
01:15:18,720 --> 01:15:20,920
Speaker 1: Another reason that if we were going to make one

1367
01:15:20,960 --> 01:15:23,880
Speaker 1: of these things and it was to be effective, it

1368
01:15:23,920 --> 01:15:27,960
Speaker 1: would need to be very big. And that is the

1369
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:30,320
Speaker 1: answer to one of our final questions. Here at the end,

1370
01:15:30,400 --> 01:15:33,040
Speaker 1: you're saying, Okay, so we know basically that we could

1371
01:15:33,120 --> 01:15:36,200
Speaker 1: make some form of artificial gravity sort of work. I mean,

1372
01:15:36,200 --> 01:15:38,439
Speaker 1: it might not be perfect, but this is you know,

1373
01:15:38,520 --> 01:15:41,519
Speaker 1: basic physics. This is not something that's totally hypothetical. It

1374
01:15:41,520 --> 01:15:44,679
Speaker 1: could work, So why haven't we done it? The main

1375
01:15:44,800 --> 01:15:48,599
Speaker 1: issue is size and cost. For a spinning artificial gravity

1376
01:15:48,640 --> 01:15:51,280
Speaker 1: environment to be tolerable to human occupants, it would need

1377
01:15:51,320 --> 01:15:54,240
Speaker 1: to be pretty big. And to be that big, you

1378
01:15:54,280 --> 01:15:57,479
Speaker 1: would need lots of construction materials. And to get lots

1379
01:15:57,479 --> 01:16:00,240
Speaker 1: of construction materials into space, you need a lot of

1380
01:16:00,360 --> 01:16:05,120
Speaker 1: rocket launches, and rocket launches are very expensive. They're getting cheaper,

1381
01:16:05,160 --> 01:16:08,240
Speaker 1: but they're still very expensive For the tons of materials

1382
01:16:08,240 --> 01:16:10,160
Speaker 1: you need to get up there to build this stuff.

1383
01:16:10,560 --> 01:16:12,719
Speaker 1: So it really at this point is mainly a matter

1384
01:16:12,800 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 1: of cost, right, And I mean you can basically any uh,

1385
01:16:16,520 --> 01:16:19,360
Speaker 1: any space mission, any space initiative. I mean, they're going

1386
01:16:19,400 --> 01:16:22,639
Speaker 1: to be priorities, and you can even if if something

1387
01:16:22,640 --> 01:16:24,280
Speaker 1: like this is on the list, it's going to get

1388
01:16:24,280 --> 01:16:28,120
Speaker 1: pushed down by other initiatives. Yeah, yeah, totally. And I mean,

1389
01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:32,080
Speaker 1: so building a one of these big, functioning artificial gravity

1390
01:16:32,120 --> 01:16:35,840
Speaker 1: environments that would be something habitable, generating something close to

1391
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:38,160
Speaker 1: Earth g could fit a lot of people on it,

1392
01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:40,920
Speaker 1: You're you're probably talking about just a multi trillion dollar

1393
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:44,080
Speaker 1: project here. It would just be so huge it's kind

1394
01:16:44,080 --> 01:16:47,879
Speaker 1: of not feasible for Earth space programs at the investment

1395
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:52,800
Speaker 1: levels they're encountering. Now here's another problem. We've got some

1396
01:16:52,880 --> 01:16:56,320
Speaker 1: limits on research. Right. Ideally, if you're gonna launch one

1397
01:16:56,360 --> 01:16:58,360
Speaker 1: of these things in space, you'd want to do a

1398
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:01,120
Speaker 1: lot of preparation research up front to make sure you're

1399
01:17:01,160 --> 01:17:03,760
Speaker 1: not making a big mistake about what what's the best

1400
01:17:03,840 --> 01:17:06,320
Speaker 1: thing to do in space? But on Earth, there's really

1401
01:17:06,360 --> 01:17:10,919
Speaker 1: no feasible way to perfectly test out artificial gravity concepts

1402
01:17:10,920 --> 01:17:13,000
Speaker 1: because on the surface of the Earth you have to

1403
01:17:13,120 --> 01:17:16,840
Speaker 1: deal with the constant complications of Earth gravity. So you

1404
01:17:16,880 --> 01:17:20,559
Speaker 1: can kind of try to simulate weightlessness. And so you

1405
01:17:20,600 --> 01:17:24,160
Speaker 1: could do like neutral buoyancy experiments, you know, where you're

1406
01:17:24,160 --> 01:17:28,799
Speaker 1: in water with a sort of balanced out buoyancy weight ratio,

1407
01:17:29,360 --> 01:17:31,400
Speaker 1: or you could do you could get in an airplane

1408
01:17:31,400 --> 01:17:33,800
Speaker 1: and do parabolic flights to have you know, twenty five

1409
01:17:33,800 --> 01:17:36,960
Speaker 1: seconds at a time or so of weightlessness. But these

1410
01:17:36,960 --> 01:17:39,559
Speaker 1: things aren't all that helpful when you're talking about trying

1411
01:17:39,560 --> 01:17:43,880
Speaker 1: to test out an artificial gravity environment at a like

1412
01:17:44,240 --> 01:17:47,599
Speaker 1: ship or space station size scale. Yeah, you really need

1413
01:17:47,600 --> 01:17:50,360
Speaker 1: a nothing eg. Zero G micro g environment and to

1414
01:17:50,400 --> 01:17:52,680
Speaker 1: get that you have to go into space. You have

1415
01:17:52,760 --> 01:17:54,800
Speaker 1: to go to orbit, right, So to really test one

1416
01:17:54,840 --> 01:17:57,000
Speaker 1: of these things, you essentially have to do it. You

1417
01:17:57,040 --> 01:17:59,760
Speaker 1: can't really test it without just making this thing and

1418
01:18:00,000 --> 01:18:02,519
Speaker 1: putting it in space. Now, I guess the good news

1419
01:18:02,720 --> 01:18:05,800
Speaker 1: is that it's kind of tom to to sort of

1420
01:18:05,800 --> 01:18:09,599
Speaker 1: reference the old Mitch Hedberg a bit about about an escalator.

1421
01:18:09,640 --> 01:18:13,400
Speaker 1: What do you call it? Broken escalator? It's stairs, right, Um,

1422
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:15,080
Speaker 1: is like if the thing didn't work, you just turn

1423
01:18:15,160 --> 01:18:18,240
Speaker 1: it off and you float. I guess right, Like it's

1424
01:18:18,280 --> 01:18:21,680
Speaker 1: still going to be serviceable. On some level, and you

1425
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 1: can imagine that. I can imagine a scenario. Maybe they've

1426
01:18:24,160 --> 01:18:25,960
Speaker 1: even done this in a sci fi where you have

1427
01:18:26,080 --> 01:18:30,639
Speaker 1: like a non functional tourists space station where people arriving like, hey,

1428
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:33,080
Speaker 1: what's with the walls? How come? How come this thing

1429
01:18:33,120 --> 01:18:35,559
Speaker 1: didn't work? Well, it's it's it. We're working on it.

1430
01:18:35,560 --> 01:18:37,479
Speaker 1: We gotta work out the kinks, so it's not fully

1431
01:18:37,479 --> 01:18:40,839
Speaker 1: functional yet, right yeah, yeah, And the people could complain.

1432
01:18:40,920 --> 01:18:44,160
Speaker 1: They'd be like, oh, but I'm I'm experiencing space sickness.

1433
01:18:44,280 --> 01:18:46,120
Speaker 1: And you'd have to be like, hey, look, it's not

1434
01:18:46,200 --> 01:18:49,280
Speaker 1: as bad as the coreolas sickness. Or it's a or

1435
01:18:49,280 --> 01:18:52,280
Speaker 1: it's a hotel where you have various rotating modules are

1436
01:18:52,360 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 1: rotating wings the hotel, and like, I'm sorry, all the

1437
01:18:56,280 --> 01:19:01,080
Speaker 1: all the rotating rooms are taken, all our gravity books. Sorry,

1438
01:19:01,120 --> 01:19:05,799
Speaker 1: we've only got smoking rooms or smoking and micro gravity.

1439
01:19:05,800 --> 01:19:12,000
Speaker 1: That's it. Sorry. Uh. But so hey, we're saying why

1440
01:19:12,040 --> 01:19:15,200
Speaker 1: it's going to be a problem, uh to to build

1441
01:19:15,240 --> 01:19:17,160
Speaker 1: these environments. But we don't want to end on a downer,

1442
01:19:17,200 --> 01:19:20,000
Speaker 1: because I've got something optimistic to say. To revisit a

1443
01:19:20,040 --> 01:19:24,080
Speaker 1: comment we made earlier. If you're willing to limit your ambitions,

1444
01:19:24,200 --> 01:19:27,920
Speaker 1: artificial gravity starts looking a lot more achievable. If only

1445
01:19:27,960 --> 01:19:31,519
Speaker 1: a small part of your spacecraft needs gravity, or if

1446
01:19:31,560 --> 01:19:34,959
Speaker 1: you're willing to settle for significantly less than Earth gravity,

1447
01:19:35,320 --> 01:19:38,240
Speaker 1: you've got a lot more options, right. For example, the

1448
01:19:38,320 --> 01:19:41,080
Speaker 1: rotating sphere compartment in two thousand one of Space Odyssey,

1449
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:43,640
Speaker 1: they say it produces only about the gravity of the

1450
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:46,479
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon. That's not a lot, but it

1451
01:19:46,560 --> 01:19:49,200
Speaker 1: might be enough that you can sort of jog like

1452
01:19:49,280 --> 01:19:53,120
Speaker 1: the character does. Basically, it's better than nothing. Things still

1453
01:19:53,200 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 1: fall towards the floor, even if it's not quite like

1454
01:19:55,560 --> 01:19:58,479
Speaker 1: being on Earth. And we mentioned some of those tests earlier,

1455
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:00,840
Speaker 1: tests on human subjects in the night teen sixties in

1456
01:20:00,880 --> 01:20:05,439
Speaker 1: these parabolic flights to basically determine what was tolerable or

1457
01:20:05,479 --> 01:20:08,519
Speaker 1: acceptable to people, you know, and they found out that

1458
01:20:08,920 --> 01:20:11,519
Speaker 1: zero point two G is actually a lot better than

1459
01:20:11,640 --> 01:20:14,719
Speaker 1: zero point one G. So there's like a pretty steep

1460
01:20:15,120 --> 01:20:18,240
Speaker 1: drop off point about what's acceptable somewhere in that range

1461
01:20:18,840 --> 01:20:22,599
Speaker 1: that normal human activities were mostly doable starting it about

1462
01:20:22,720 --> 01:20:25,600
Speaker 1: zero point two G. At about zero point five G

1463
01:20:25,840 --> 01:20:28,280
Speaker 1: once you get to half of Earth gravity, subjects felt

1464
01:20:28,280 --> 01:20:30,680
Speaker 1: about as sure of their movements as they did at

1465
01:20:30,680 --> 01:20:35,200
Speaker 1: one g. So once you're halfway there, it's basically good

1466
01:20:35,320 --> 01:20:38,280
Speaker 1: enough to do your movements and you know, maybe even

1467
01:20:38,280 --> 01:20:41,200
Speaker 1: sleep better at night. Yeah, all right, so there you

1468
01:20:41,280 --> 01:20:45,040
Speaker 1: have it. Artificial gravity. Uh, not to be confused with

1469
01:20:45,439 --> 01:20:49,760
Speaker 1: anti gravity. That's an entirely different podcast there. Now, how

1470
01:20:49,760 --> 01:20:52,640
Speaker 1: many times did we accidentally say anti gravity in this

1471
01:20:52,680 --> 01:20:55,280
Speaker 1: episode today? None that I know of, but there could be.

1472
01:20:56,360 --> 01:20:58,840
Speaker 1: How many are going to catch later? I kept catching

1473
01:20:58,840 --> 01:21:00,960
Speaker 1: myself doing it in the note It's I kept I

1474
01:21:01,080 --> 01:21:03,840
Speaker 1: kept typing in um anti gravity, and I have to

1475
01:21:03,880 --> 01:21:06,200
Speaker 1: go back and it was like, not anti gravity because

1476
01:21:06,240 --> 01:21:08,519
Speaker 1: anti gravity is sort of sort of even though it's

1477
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:10,600
Speaker 1: fun and science fiction as well, it's sort of a

1478
01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:14,800
Speaker 1: dirty word in scientific research. There are other terms that

1479
01:21:14,840 --> 01:21:17,040
Speaker 1: you would use. But but again that's a that's a

1480
01:21:17,080 --> 01:21:19,160
Speaker 1: topic for another time. If you guys want to discuss

1481
01:21:19,200 --> 01:21:21,880
Speaker 1: anti gravity, we can do that in a later date.

1482
01:21:22,439 --> 01:21:25,360
Speaker 1: Anti gravity it's actually fairly simple. It's commonly known as

1483
01:21:25,439 --> 01:21:31,120
Speaker 1: jumping and lifting. All right, Well, don't spoil it all,

1484
01:21:31,160 --> 01:21:33,559
Speaker 1: don't blow it all, Joe. Alright, So hey, if you

1485
01:21:33,560 --> 01:21:35,840
Speaker 1: wanna listen to more episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind,

1486
01:21:35,840 --> 01:21:37,559
Speaker 1: you want to explore past episodes and we have a

1487
01:21:37,600 --> 01:21:40,120
Speaker 1: bunch of them, many of which deal with space and

1488
01:21:40,120 --> 01:21:42,680
Speaker 1: space exploration. Head on over to stuff to Blow your

1489
01:21:42,720 --> 01:21:45,759
Speaker 1: Mind dot com That is the mothership. Are are spinning

1490
01:21:46,160 --> 01:21:50,200
Speaker 1: mothership there and you will find uh a boarded UH

1491
01:21:50,520 --> 01:21:54,400
Speaker 1: post blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, links out to our

1492
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Speaker 1: verious social media accounts that just Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram.

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Speaker 1: We're on all of those. Hunt us down, follow us,

1494
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1495
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Speaker 1: or any other podcast system out there, leave us a

1496
01:22:07,840 --> 01:22:09,559
Speaker 1: nice review if you have the ability to do so,

1497
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:12,839
Speaker 1: because that will help tweak the algorithm in our favorite

1498
01:22:12,840 --> 01:22:15,160
Speaker 1: and allow us to continue to bring great episodes like

1499
01:22:15,200 --> 01:22:17,240
Speaker 1: this to your year olds. Andy, And if you want

1500
01:22:17,240 --> 01:22:19,439
Speaker 1: to get on that mothership with us and get a

1501
01:22:19,479 --> 01:22:23,160
Speaker 1: little bit sick, you can always email us and blow

1502
01:22:23,240 --> 01:22:36,200
Speaker 1: the mind at how stuff works dot com for more

1503
01:22:36,240 --> 01:22:38,519
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how

1504
01:22:38,600 --> 01:23:00,000
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com