Could centrifugal force solve some long-term spaceflight problems?

[makinyashikino]

One of the main reasons against long term missions to places further in space, such as mars(There are PLENTY other reasons we aren't going now, but bear with me) is that zero-g results in many health problems such as muscle atrophy and loss of bone density. This results in hours of vigorous exercise daily for astronauts, as well as hauling heavy and expensive exercise equipment to space. What if we used the simulated gravity from centripetal force in order to provide 1g of force. It would have to look like the ship from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might also be problematic to reach the centre of the ship, due to the force. But the ship itself would function as one giant treadmill for exercise. Thoughts?

[*Aqua*]

Congratulations for having a century-old idea!

There a tons of threads about it. Just take a look around.

[astropapi1]

There's a conceptual ship called "NAUTILUS-X", which would use a centrifuge. There's a proposal to add a small one to the ISS to test the concept:

It would like this when attatched to the station:

[Nibb31]

The centrifuge won't happen on the ISS. There is not enough time before the end-of-life of the ISS to develop, launch, and use it. Also, it induces vibrations that might interfere with the microgravity research that's being done in other labs.

For use on a spacecraft, it makes more sense to spin the entire vehicle instead of relying on a vital rotating joint. You want to minimize moving parts as much as possible.

The thing is, we simply don't know anything about centrifugal artificial gravity. It might be beneficial or its side-effects might be detrimental. The induced Coriolis effect might cause nausea, dizziness, blood-circulation problems or internal-ear issues. We don't know how much is necessary or viable and we don't know if it's any better or worse than using medication and exercice like we do now.

In the current state of knowledge, it doesn't make sense to design a hypothetical medium-term interplanetary mission around it. There is no reason to claim that artificial gravity is absolutely necessary, but it does make the vehicle design much more complex and expensive.

[FREEFALL1984]

Best method in my opinion would be the well established idea to use a long cable and have the service module on one end along with any mission specific hardware which requires no human interation and the ship on the other end, in theory this cable could be make long enough to reduce the coriolis effect and to keep the RPM low, while a simple cable would suffice, but in my opinion a telescopic tube with a habitable internal service tunnel would be most effective as it could be maintained internally, and a rotating ship would be tough to EVA from without stopping the spin. The only other difficulties would be in keeping the spin stable and reliable as any slight shift in weight would effect the centre of mass and impart a wobble to the rotation effecting the amount of artificial gravity felt by the crew, perhaps a bundle of ballast tanks in both modules could pump RCS fuel or waste water around to maintain the spin.

[Sillychris]

Just accelerate at 1G. All the time.

[SargeRho]

Then you need a high ISP, high thrust engine, like antimatter or fusion engines. Centrifuges, or just spinning the whole ship, is a easier solution.

[shynung]

Just accelerate at 1G. All the time.

Imagine the fuel bill...

[Sillychris]

Ok, so here's a wacky idea:

Not to be confused with reactionless drive (Although the design would be very similar to something like that)

You have a linear oscillating station of some sort. Not harmonic since you want to stay close to constant acceleration, but similar to a harmonic oscillator. Two rooms shooting back and forth, linked to eachother with some sort of conservative force. The obvious complication is that up would change periodically, but you wouldn't be spinning!

[FREEFALL1984]

Ok, so here's a wacky idea:

Not to be confused with reactionless drive (Although the design would be very similar to something like that)

You have a linear oscillating station of some sort. Not harmonic since you want to stay close to constant acceleration, but similar to a harmonic oscillator. Two rooms shooting back and forth, linked to eachother with some sort of conservative force. The obvious complication is that up would change periodically, but you wouldn't be spinning!

I'm pretty sure that would make a brilliant fairground ride, but eventually you would shake the crap out of the space station and crew haha