Artificial Gravity Issues

[Kerbalsaurus]

I just got the Breaking Ground DLC, so I started to make an artificial gravity station, called Kubrick Station. Anyways, I'm struggling to get the ring to work. At first I screwed up connecting it, and it make the whole space station spin. So I tried to fix it, and when I did, it didn't spin at all. And I've been stuck there since, because I just put the game down. Anyone know how to get this to work?

[The Aziz]

They are tricky because you literally have no control over which part is going to spin. Unless I guess you put a dozen reaction wheels but I haven't tried that.

If your ring is in the middle, what you need is two rotors, one on each side of the ring, spinning in opposite directions, with the same rpm, essentially making the outside sections stable relative to each other (connecting both with struts help, as they don't break when eg. a structural piece holding the ring passes them)

I did it here, and while you can't see it, it works. Three times on one ship.

 

[dci]

If you did rotary joint from motorless  heaviest servo and fairing with interstage nodes enabled, it should work. My approach to get these things rotating is by switching reaction wheels on or off.

To spin up, turn on all RW whose are part of ring, and off ALL the RWs whose are part of vessel body (RWs, command modules with RW integrated, all torque must be turned off). When your ring is spinning fast enough, turn off all RWs connected to ring and on all RWs connected to vessel main body. AG is your friend in this case.

It worked for me even in my earliest rotary joints version, where front part, ring and engine section were totally independent, so I could rotate any of these three sections, still, when RWs are properly set on or off, only ring was spinning. But fairing as joint section makes better results for me, as command and engine sections are in one piece.

here bigger ring with habitat and smaller ring with labs, my first design with fairings+EM64 rotors

Edited August 9, 2022 by dci
image insert

[BadOaks]

One centrifuge strategy that I used previously was to isolate the centrifuge from the rest of the ship using two unmotorized rotors, and then have a single motorized rotor between the spin and counter-spin sections to get it up to speed.

This prevents any torque from getting applied to ship itself, while automatically spinning up the centrifuge every time you come out of time warp. The video below is WIP vessel I made to test the design.