In _Mass Effect_ there's a warning printed along the walls of the Citadel that reads "Gravity Achieved via Rotation-- Dropped Objects Will Fall Towards the Window"

The space station was rotating fine the other week lol

My body has slowly lost muscle and bone mass watching youtube videos.

I have heard a critical aspect of rotational gravity is to get the radius large enough that the gravity is essentially the same for both your feet and your head (i.e. minimal change over 2m, not sure what threshold is thought to be the maximum difference to be allowed). That makes adaptation and all tasks a lot easier.

I read a book on Anti-Gravity, couldn't put it down.

15:04 "I'm Scott Manley, fly safe" (headphones explode, ears bleed, and eardrums collapse)

I remember seeing films of the Skylab astronauts running along the inside of the space station creating "artificial gravity". They talked about starting by hooking their feet in crevices on the walls and once they got enough momentum they had gravity.

From what I have heard, that on a space station scale assuming the minimum diameter and rpm to produce an acceptably healthy level of gravity (many experts seem to settle on a number close to 450' diameter), the perceived level of coriolis effect would be substantially reduced and well within the range of normal human adaptability.

"Unlimited source of pedantry from physicists" is a great way to describe every physics teacher ever tellling you that centrifugal force isn't real and you just stand there with an open mouth until it starts making sense after a few weeks and dozens of explanations.

The russians tried to carry out tests like this with the ISS the other week...

Had seen your name (Channel) many times in my suggested videos, watched a couple over the last 2 years, then I saw this one, watched it and as soon as I reached the end, you had yourself a new subscriber! One who will go binge watching your available content!

Really fascinating. So comprehensive and love the detail you included.

14:28 "With the new wave of space tourism..." It's just amazing that we can start saying things like that without it being fiction

"So maybe the only thing [Arthur C. Clarke] got wrong is the date." I expect this to be true of many things, given a long enough sampling period.

Once again Mr. Scott you knocked it out of the park! It’s always a pleasure listening to your videos. Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday! And keep looking up! 👍

Really brilliant and accurate. As a paraglider pilot, I have learned to fix my vision on a wing tip when performing high g "spiral " descent turns. Have you read the excellent descriptions of artificial G combat on the Tiamat station in Larry Niven's Man-Kzin wars? A well trained human fighter who has adapted to the coriolis forces can best a Kzin.

"Planet size chunks of mass are great to living on but it's kind of inconvenient to carry along if you're doing a space flight". I love taht Scott! :D

"Planet size chunks of mass are great for living on, but they're kind of inconvenient to carry along if you're doing spaceflight." Technically, that's exactly what we are doing: spaceflight on a planetary size chuck of mass.

Good to listen to, good to know people like Scott are explaining things like this, glad to see interest in space exploration growing again as I feel it was given very little attention in the UK,and great to say kids at school are really re,connecting , my daughter told me she was discussing lunar orbits in her primary school, it broadens their minds and makes everyday problems less concerning 👍

The rotating systems that you talked about are the amusement park types where centrifugal force throws one against the side . But you are standing vertically , feet against the floor , and not the side against which your body is thrown . The artificial gravity rotating donuts that would work are the type where one walks on the circumference of the donut , and where " up " is towards the center of the donut . If the donut were big enough and spinning at the appropriate angular speed , then as one walks around the " donut " , you wouldn't notice the curvature , " down " would be at your feet , and " up " would be toward the hub , or the center of the ' donut ' . And this coriolis force only appears when walking along a ' spoke ' or on a merry go round where you are not walking around on the circumference , but rather say from the center to the outside , as the merry go round is rotating . But it will be essential to bring gravity along on some extended space mission . Humans have evolved in it , and cannot live for long periods of time without it .

There is a serious near-future need for a rotating space station. Research is needed into how much "gravity" is necessary to stave off loss of bone and muscle mass. A rotating station can run at 1/6, 1/3, 2/3, etc for different stints, with the crew then medically tested for the known effects. This will let us know how much G is needed for a voyage to Mars. Constant exercise on the ISS only ameliorates the zero-g effects and is a waste of crew time. Also, large-scale experiments need to be done on lunar construction materials and techniques. These will be much more easily done in LEO with its quick and relatively cheap accessibility.

When I was a teenager, a friend and I worked at a fair for a week and got unlimited free access to a lot of the rides in payment (when we weren't working of course). Our favorite was the spinning centrifuge 'starship' ride. It had slanted sides and a closed, solid ceiling. And when it got going, the sleds you would lay against would shift towards the ceiling. Now I get motion sick pretty easy, but over the course of all our times riding it, which probably totaled over an hour or 2, we adjusted enough to sit up and move around and my friend was even able to stand on the sled, much to the annoyance of the ride operator. The human body can totally adapt to a rotating station design. As well as higher Gs.

I always find it hilarious when they use magnetic boots and everything else stays down, nothing ever floats. Great video.

I once went to Worlds of Fun near Kansas City and rode the centrifuge ride where they drop the floor so many times in a row I nearly broke the park record of 27. Sadly I only learned that after I got off the ride because I was hungry. (Yeah, cast iron stomach here!) But the coriolis effect was a BLAST! Several people kept riding with me and we'd throw stuffed animals at each other and you could watch them arc the way the arrows do in the old Russian video. It was REALLY hard to aim for someone to catch it because you had to predict where they'd be, and seeing the outside world whizzing by in your periphery made it hard to concentrate.

This reminds me of something I learned once upon a time. When trains were first built and were becoming popular, there was a non-zero number of people who believed trains would cause a variety of issues. From causing insanity due to noise to the body not being able to take speeds much higher than those of a horse. Of course now we live in very loud cities and go speeds of 600mph when flying. That might all be BS, I'm no historian, but I remember learning that somewhere along the way.

A classic symptom of gravity affecting the way we function, is an ocean voyage, on a medium sized vessel. One gets used to the motion over time, but on reaching land, it takes some time to adjust back to a relatively normal gait.

Love the videos Scott 🤘🥳 thank you for all the awesome content 🙏

OMG Mr. Manley, the first part was from Elite Dangerous, my most loved game. And a game with such accuracy that one might find intimidating of how Stellar Forge actually predicted many phenomenas like Thorne-Zhytkov objects and planet collisions. The game spawns and entire Milky Way among it's servers and the level of accuracy is astounding. Because many of us love space, we can explore space with spaceships based on real theoretical drives, called FSD (Alcubierre Drive). Thank you for this lovely video :) o7 and be well.

You can’t have artificial gravity without the Blue Danube.

2001: A Space Oddessy was the first movie I saw, as we had a "field trip" in elementary school to a majestic old theater in Chicago. An amazing film, I ate it up as a young lad, since EVERY kid at that time wanted to be an astronaut. And Arthur C. Clarke (and Stanley Kubrick) did a magnificent job with the story and cinematic presentation.

A very interesting survey of the topic, thank you. One point you haven't mentioned is that the radius refers to the distance from the center of rotation, which is not necessarily the same as the size of the spaceship. For example, Robert Zubrin in his book "A case for Mars" suggests a system in which the spaceship is tethered to its booster by a long cable, creating a system of weight and counter-weight that can rotate around its center of weight, and the radius there is only limited by the strength to weight ratio of the connecting cable.

Thank you for an excellent description of this topic.....you good looking hunk of astronautical knowledge....loving yall

This is a question I've had for years, why we haven't built a rotating space station. I assumed there was some reason (that I didn't understand) where it wouldn't actually work. Apparently, it can work, it just hasn't been built yet. Thanks for answering that.

After viewing this video, I'm left with the vivid mental picture of Scott explaining to his very young schoolmates the physics of why they feel dizzy after spinning on the playground.

If rotational (angular) velocity is an issue, one can always lower the rotation by using two spacecraft of equal mass connected together by a long tether. The longer the tether, the lower the angular velocity needed to achieve 1G. And hence the less effect of rotational compensation.

Haven't watched Scott's videos for months but right away I can tell his English has improved. He doesn't struggle as much.

Wow! That a Russian rotating room is amazing. 60’s sci-fi vibe. Love it.

Babylon 5 had this down extremely well, and one of the huge advantages of the way advanced species was the use of artificial gravity, which the humans didn't posses, and all their ships were rotating models, ofc including the Babylon 5 itself. The people who modeled the B5 were physics nuts, and wanted to make the station as realistic as possible, including trying to make the structure of the station work with rotating gravity The rotation inside the space station is also used in one critical plot points as a plot device

I found this to be very interesting and would like to know more. A video about the cost of building Clarkes station, comparison to the ISS when it comes to engineering and size etc would be VERY interesting to see. Also, thanks for all the good content!

Performing ordinary tasks under small radius artificial gravity looks to be a pretty uncomfortable situation, because of the need to move around, but if the primary goal is to resist muscular and skeletal degradation on longer space missions, merely *sleeping* in rotational gravity, perhaps of more than 10m/s^2, would be enough. A centrifuge "donut" inside a Starship hull might have a diameter of perhaps 8 meters, circumference of around 25 meters. Room for 8 or more "head to toe" bunks around the circumference. Folks ready for bed climb in and then the centrifuge is balanced and spun up against a counter-rotating weight donut closer to the center (so it doesn't spin the overall craft). Lying prone with respect to the radial force would probably mean that even left/right motions of the head wouldn't be vomit inducing because they wouldn't change orientation with respect to the direction of motion. At sleep cycle end, centrifuge spins down and everybody climbs out... 8 hours/day of 1.0 (or more) G might be enough to do the job...

I'm a VR developer and once worked in the very early stages of a game set on a true ringworld (i.e. the whole ring is traversible, and the gravity vector changes smoothly, vs faking it like Halo does). We ended up abandoning the concept because of how upsetting moving around in a ringworld is. Even at large ring sizes like 1km, everyone who tried it got very disoriented very quickly as soon as they were in an open space with long sightlines. It's something that I'm sure you could adapt to, but from that experiment, I think the first week would be more miserable than science fiction usually suggests.

10:56 That arrow throw is wild. Wow 🙂

I lost a vestibular nerve two years ago. This video hits me different. Fascinating.

I found the artificial gravity concept in "Stowaway" (2021) to be really cool (around the 9minute mark). Slight axial rotation of the primary vehicle, then a counterweight that rolls outward along a track protruding from the vehicle, continuing outward then locking in place when 1 G is achieved. The entire structure is in a sense 'flung' through space, like someone throwing a long twig with a ball attached to the end.

If you're walking down the corridor under seemingly normal gravity, then you realise you've forgotten something and turn round and run in the opposite direction to the rotation, you'll probably get to taste your lunch for a second time.

I love how they visually explained the Coriolis effect in the expanse

I'm SO EXCITED to find this video. I had the honor and pleasure of working on a project with Walter Reed in 1991-2 as part of my senior year in my school's Engineering program, where our team built a prototype for a testing module to be flown in the Space Shuttle, with the goal to answer this exact question - do human cells react differently between an actual gravitational field vs simulated gravity through centripetal acceleration. Obviously most scientists believed that the centripetal acceleration would prevent the massive tissue loss from zero/microgravity, but it hadn't been proven. The test module contained a spinning disc (centrifuge) that was accelerated and decelerated in order to maintain a consistent 1g of acceleration throughout the flight, so that the test cells on the centrifuge could be compared to the "control" cells that were static in the module (being fed, etc in the same fashion - but experiencing microgravity during the Shuttle's flight). Obviously the hope was that the test cells (kept at 1g) would be healthier than those that were not spinning, but frankly no one knew for sure. Our student team even got to go to Houston and test the module in "The Vomit Comet" while astronaut's trained at the other end of the plane. It was pretty great, and the Walter Reed team was ecstatic with our prototype. I only wish I'd gotten to know more about the actual/final test module - when/if was built, the testing results, etc. EDIT: I found the report we sent to WR: apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADB169986

Thank you. You are very easy to listen to and easy to understand.

Scott omitted to mention the Gemini XI artificial gravity experiment of 1966. The spacecraft was tethered to an Agena target vehicle, and by firing their side thrusters to slowly rotate the combined spacecraft they were able to generate about 0.00015 g of artificial gravity.

As a sailor (military so no windows :P) who always gets really sick on the first 2 days at sea I can say that turning your head during motion is indeed really trippy, but a funny thing is that you get to expect it. Eventually you have a pretty good intuitive sense of where everything is and the whole world becomes absolute (fwd/port/stbd/aft) and relative references (front/left/right/back) are almost never used anymore. The other funny thing is that since you are used to monitor the variations in the gravity vector to know what direction you are facing, when you get on the ground and turn and you don't perceive the expected variation change in the gravity vector, it's like your eyes said you turned but you don't feel like you've turned and it's really nauseating. Imo land sickness is the weirdest, but it is easier to get over than sea sickness. I'm pretty sure astronauts on a space station would develop this notion of orientation through gravity, though it could take more time because the effects are way more intense than on a ship. The part I would be more concerned about is the difference in force at r - {your height} and r, a large enough radius should be chosen to minimize it.

2001 A Space Odyssey is my favourite movie, and probably instrumental in getting me into engineering...along with Star Trek of course. Great video, Scott!!!!

If you keep in mind that the rotation will always offset the artificial floor then it may be possible to come close enough to the real thing. In a 2001 styled system, moving in the direction of rotation will always feel like you're going uphill. You could possibly correct for this by modifying the wheel shape into more of a "golden ratio" shape with stairs going up at a few points to compensate for that.

Hmm, the old end tune has so much more personality and joy!

Gemini XI did an experiment in 1966 where they used a tether to connect their capsule and their Agena Target vehicle and using their side thrusters to get them rotating bola-style to generate very modest (0.00015g) artificial gravity. The Agena Target vehicles were used to develop many of the Apollo techniques of rendevous, docking, etc.

2001 was filmed in the 60s. It was visually stunning for its time. I would love to see it on the big screen.

I honestly got motion sickness from your explanations of motion sickness. Brought me back to the MERRY go round and other similar situations. I enjoyed those study analysis. The exercises, and adapting to the anti gravity seems to be the best option as done on the ISS. 👍🛸

Great video as usual, Scott. Little trivia: I had the privilege of a long chat with Arthur C Clarke en route to LA where the premiere of 2010 was to be held. He told me that one of the problems was that all the designs and blueprints of the 2001 ship had been destroyed - they had to go through the 2001 film again and again to figure out the dimensions and how the set was built!

After a while you'd be able to "feel" directions in side the rotating space station and be able to know which way you are oriented by how it affects movement.

Re doing research in a rotation space station, the center could be designed so that it doesn't rotate, with the other circular part of the space station rotating. An elevator can be taken that slows rotation to bring researchers to the 0 gravity center portion of the space station. I think it's just a matter of time before we have this, likely once we are able to make the space station large enough such that the radius is quite large. What would be really amazing is if we put a super large telescope at that center portion. The space station would also allow for servicing that telescope.

Loving the channel. Love the Elite Dangerous footage in this one Commander.

Realizing that people had conceptualized "humans in zero gravity" before anyone had ever gone to space is... fascinating.

I’m looking forward for hear this magical words “spin the drum!”.

You can feel the effects if you're in an airliner that's making a turn, like if it has to do a 180 after takeoff. During the turn rock your head forward and backward and you'll definitely feel these effects. I think its pretty cool and fun to do. Also, we've been doing micro-gravity experiments for decades now, has anyone ever discovered anything useful, and even if they did how could it ever be economical at $10,000 per pound (or even $5000/lb)

Another one well done thank you sir for sharing

I remember these separate pro-spin and anti-spin ladders between the floors of the rotating spacestation. I saw this in the American Industrial Design Standards book, which was translated to Russian in the 70's.

I never really made the connection but, I had vertigo twice in as many years. Each time it was an absolutely horrible experience. Each time, it came on suddenly. Even before I opened my eyes, it felt like the room was spinning. When I did open my eyes and tried to site up, it was as if I stood up suddenly on a fast-spinning merry-go-round. I instantly fell, while constantly feeling like I was in a spin. All of this happened in a third-world country, and I was the only one with a driver's license. What turned out to be a really bad choice and decision. I drove myself to a medical clinic, about fifteen minutes from home. Praying and driving as cautiously as possible, and with my wife helping with where I and the car was at every moment, we made it to the clinic. Translating that experience with a rotating space station, I can't imagine how they will adapt if it is at all similar to the vertigo experience I had...twice. In case you are wondering. Vertigo is an awful condition. You are spinning while being still. When you move, the feeling is how I would imagine a fidget would feel as it spins and you rotate it while it is spinning. That is if a fidget could feel.

Written like. Thanks for the video Mr. Manley...

That Coriolis force sounds like what you feel after getting off a treadmill, feels like you're walking super fast.

Thank you so much for making this, Scott... Been trying to understand how viable this concept is in reality, and you've managed to help me in this process.

Gemini 11 did an experiment that generated a small amount of artificial gravity by spinning the spacecraft when it was connected to the Agena upper stage via a 30m tether.

It will be interesting to discover where the happy medium is for artificial gravity -- where most of the physical effects of low gravity are offset while at the same time the rotations are tolerable for humans and the size of mechanism is feasible for delivery to orbit. I'm assuming that even 2 m/s² would produce major benefits and make long term space flight/residency much more tolerable.

An interesting analogy: when automobiles were becoming possible there were serious discussions on whether going that fast might cause internal injuries. No human in nature had been clocked at over 33-40mph, although we now have thoroughbred horses who can hit 55. Nothing wrong with stopping to think occasionally.

Okay home boy pulled 8 G's in the cyclotron without passing out! That's awesome! I blacked out and about 7.5 but I was only 19 at the time. Most of our fighter pilots that qualify for Blue Angels pull 8 to 9 Gees and the most insane Blue Angels maneuver pulls 8.5! That is some serious training to be that alert during 8gs

Hey Scott I just wanted to share that I clicked on this video mostly because I realized I missed you! I used to watch you a ton several years ago, I binged your KSP content and sometimes watched your other content and I really liked you for being a scientific and smart influence in my life, as well as having such a bright personality. Thank you for sharing this video and all others, I really found it fascinating and I was suddenly transported back to my 20 year old self getting lost in the awe of space. Wish you the best my friend, lightspeed!

Centrifugal gravity would eliminate one of the greatest health risks of extended space travel. There could even be facilities on the Moon and Mars to simulate Earth gravity to prevent loss of muscle and bone density. This seems like an excellent area for future research.

Reminds me of J. Michael Straczynski's "Babylon 5" series (1993-1998). He wanted his Sci-fi series to be based serious science. NASA's advise was to make a cylinder 5 miles in diameter and rotate it at 60 MPH.

Wow, this is the best video I've ever seen about this topic! I've never seen the historical footage you included in the second half. Great stuff, Scott!

The answer is yes, but I’m willing to hear your arguments Scott.

Man, you are a good at this subject!

Your models are awesome

I really would like to explore the idea of two "starships' tethered node to nose, by 300 ft of 'cable' then swung around the center point. That should proved plenty of distance for a slow "spin" for 1/4 G or so. We'd need a center point to store the cable, winching it in and out as needed. Hmmm.....

This was the video about space that I never knew I needed but definitely had to watch! Thanks. :)

Indications are that a practical cable connected space station can be configured. ( The station and a counter weight) The rotation rate should be below 2 rpm and "gravity" limited to 1/2 g, adequate for a voyage to Mars. Interesting cable dynamics are present during spin up and under the influence of the gravity gradient forces in the proximity of earth (LEO) The cables are long (2 × a/omega²) omega = rpm×2π/60 a ~ 5m/s² Coriolis forces are felt "climbing" or "descending" in the limited "height" of the habitable side of the station from one "floor" to the other. Digital simulations showed that the motion was stable when the rotation was along the axis of the largest principal moment of inertia. This axis was also perpendicular to the plane of the orbit Astronaut movement did excite wave like cable dynamics, which needed to be damped.

Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video. Many thanks for the links to the papers.

Really neat, I had no Idea angled living spaces have been placed on centrifuges here on earth! Really cool stuff.

Had an idea for g-force generation in space that doesn't require a giant rotating ring, basically just winching out structures attached to a rotating airlock. Downside being they would need to be reeled in and out, upside being significantly fewer resources required. One thing that falls on both is that it can isolate a section from the main body. Things like storing rotational energy in a flywheel, counterbalancing structures with resources, carrying utilities along a tether, and adjustment reaction wheels in the structures are interesting to consider. Space tourists might fund it, and astronauts may appreciate breaks from zero g that don't require reentry.

Thank you for an interesting, well presented, and informative video which has explained many of the drawbacks of artificial gravity. A point that was missed though is the fact that a rotating wheel on space, orientated as an artificial gravity solution would need to be, would end up tumbling over an over because in such rotation, bodies will always shift to an axis providing the maximum moment of inertia. Early satellites experienced this due to their protruding antenna and ended up tumbling. Also Coriolis, being a very often misunderstood phenomenon, is an effect and not a force although it is often quoted as a force even in many scientific papers and internet articles (correct me if I'm wrong).

Would be awesome to see rotating space stations. Also I hope the first bar will be called Quark's, because of course

it doesnt necessarily need to be a whole huge ring superstructure. i always picture something like two boxes spinning around each other. it would be basically the module that everyone stays in, and another module with life support, power, and whatever else was needed that didnt need to be IN the habitation module. and these two would be connected by a long set of cables and the whole thing would spin like two dancers spinning around each other holding hands. if there are negative effects from spinning to fast, just make the cables longer and spin slower.

Holy ham this was informative! Love that you actually included the math!

An interesting concept in Robert Zubrin's "Case for Mars", for providing rotational gravity very cheaply, relably and simply, on a Mars mission was to use the empty Mars trajectory insertion rocket stage as a counterweight. Once on the trajectory to Mars from Earth orbit, instead of jettisoning, the empty stage is paid out behind the spacecraft on a line from a spool to a distance of a few hundred metres, (high school physics, which I've long forgotten, tells you how long); retro rockets mounted on both the empty stage and the space craft are then fired in opposite directions to impart rotation about the mutual centre of gravity; varied rotation rates for the same gravitational effect can be achieved by varying the length of line paid out. The counterweight empty stage can be released, by severing the tether, on close approach to Mars, carefully timed so that the spacecraft is pointing in the correct vector at the moment of release. This means that the crew get to experience gravity for the whole of both the outward and the return trip. On return to Earth, the same system can be used, with the added benefit that rotation speed could be incrementally increased over a period of days or weeks to transition from Mars equivalent gravity (0.38G) to 1G, thus minimising the long-term health effects of low/zero G on the human body. The line needs to be pretty strong though - if the spaceship has a mass of 50 tonnes, then that's going to need to be the very minimum breaking strain of the line - probably carbon fibre - commercially available 10mm carbon fibre rope has a 7000Kg breaking strain.

As long as you have a large spin radius (50+m) and a relatively low rotation rate (>2.0 rpm) It should hardly be noticeably different from standing on a planetary surface, though Coriolis force technically is present in this case, it should be barley noticeable in daily activities.

Great to see the Elite Dangerous space stations with those lovely in game space ships flying away from them. 'Down To Earth Astronomy' channel had an interesting video which touched on the space stations in the game Elite Dangerous in regards to rotational gravity as an interesting video for players of the game. That channel by the way is for Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous computer game player viewers as a note to all so please don't expect Scott Manley or Anton Petrov type content. What a fascinating video Scott, thank you and keep up the great work.

While living in Alaska, I would spend weeks at a time on the decks of an 80 ft fishing vessel that Never stopped moving about in 3D space while changing direction constantly in High Seas. Some adapt quickly & some deal with motion sickness for days but eventually adapt. If you've become accustomed to the constant motion and suddenly find yourself on an immovable dock, it's Very difficult to stand without ur brain telling you to move and away about. That's why a Tavern is a Much better choice than trying to drive when fresh off the boat. ; )

I'd imagine magnetic boots would be more useful in a situation where a craft or station (or even just small sections/rooms) was designed to be operated with a specific orientation in mind, but for whatever reason didn't have gravity at the moment (in the expanse their ships have a single orientation to them because of the torch drive usually running, so anchoring yourself while the drive is off and your trying to get work done makes sense). I recall Skylap had little areas like this (like the area they shaved in), but they just had simple fabric feet holders in the "floor" or wall or ceiling depending how you viewed it. I will say there are two other option for "gravity" you didn't mention and often get over looked strong air currents and Diamagnetism (the closest to electric "gravity" with an on off switch physics allows that we know of) again it would act as a pushing force so your electromagnets creating the "gravity" would be in the ceiling not the floor like scifi often says. ukposts.info/have/v-deo/g5x7p4yommaq2IE.html Because of the energy usage I both don't see a small ship with limited power or a large station with too much surface area to generate gravity to take advantage of it. The two main ways I see it maybe being used is on "upper" levels of spin sections that generating 1/3 or less gravity to supplement you back up closer to 1G while maybe canceling out some gravity on "lower" levels that generate more the 1G, small sections in large moon bases, or provide at least small amounts of gravity in O'Neil Cylinder hubs (one futurism idea is to link non rotating sections together in different geometric configurations, so you don't have to use shuttles to transfer people and cargo like fully separate stations do even if in practice they operate like independent towns) typically it's seen as you just live with micro gravity in those hubs and use trams or let people just float freely between the O'Neil Cylinders, but they'd be small enough relative to the full station I could see you throwing spare energy at it for at least Lunar or lower via Diamagnetism enough to let someone walk between the two even if a bit bouncy. That would be even more relevant if you were trying to make large wild life preserves in space and wanted to let the animals migrate on their own between Cylinders like they migrate on earth for seasons, but there are also futurism ideas where you use linked O'Neil Cylinders as a kind of cross between a full dyson sphere and dyson swarm. The sphere offering one large connected surface area to live in, while the swarm is more likely to be possible to construct with known material strength/aviablity in our star system and each station has spin gravity while typically lacking that large connected living area the sphere promises.

Nicely done piece on artificial gravity. Great video of US and USSR ground experiments. Thank you, Scott.

It seems to me that the solution to the difficulties of rotating artificial gravity is to make the diameter much larger, by using pairs of habitats linked with some long very strong cables. That way you can have a 2km diameter where all the weirdness of small fast rotating rings is eliminated. You could have a central counter rotating unit for entering and exiting the system and an elevator going to the rotating pods. The nice thing is you can start with just 2 pods with a central unit, and add more as needed until eventually you have a full ring of pods. After that you can build up multiple parallel rings. Concievably you could use the rotational force for launching things from the pods, although aiming might be challenging, changing the rotational axis of 3 elements on a string.

Thanks, Scott.

As someone who has a damaged labyrinth and adapted I can confirm it is doable. Maybe it could be possible to induce a temporary adjustment to labyrinth function on a structure like this. It might not be necessary for people to be in a rotating structure 24/7 but like the gym equipment currently used on space craft regular periods of time in simulated gravity might be enough to prevent muscle and bone loss.

This was an important subject to cover for the future of space flight. Thanks.