Tbf, 1g of thrust is a lot to assume, there are quite a few ways to do a high-efficiency rocket that result in extremely low thrust but applied for a long period of time. Still probably better to arrange them the way you suggest but I’m not sure it would be a huge problem for something like, say, an ion engine for example

@CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world @artshare@lemmy.world

Back when I initially drew, I was thinking of some premises, including ionic thrusters (whose acceleration is knowingly slow) used only for changing the ship’s course which would essentially be wandering naturally (and unhurriedly) towards deep space, after being built in orbit (much akin to how ISS was built) then towed to orbit near escape velocities by detachable stages before leveraging gravitational assist, like the Voyagers did. In this sense, the centrifuge would be used during free roam through deep space, when the ship isn’t accelerating on its own. Also, the crew would be small (up to a dozen, but ideally three or five people, or an odd numbers of people), which would be floating in microgravity inside the rest of the ship (esp. the cockpit) most of the time.

But thinking about your design, rings around the ship instead of ships above/below the ship, yours is a better design than mine, because it’d also include a more efficient connection hallway to/from the rest of the ship.

I tried to draw it, keeping the pair of counterbalancing rings:

@Adderbox76@lemmy.ca @artshare@lemmy.world

You’re astronauts would be puking 24/7

Lol

the rings are way too small

Indeed, the scale in which I depicted the idea isn’t accurate and, in reality, the whole thing should be way bigger, which means the astronauts would be barely visible from outside the cockpit’s windows.

At least in a mental model, if these models had larger dimensions than they’re currently implied to have, the spaceship’s body/hull would end up heavier than the rings, even when the rings are also scaled up, because the volume and the surface of the hull is implied/expected to exceed those of the rings, whose materials should be “truss-like” (i.e. hollow) for these to be lighter than the ship’s hull.

But, welp, it’s been a long while since I tinkered with Kerbal Space Program.

@SGforce@lemmy.ca @artshare@lemmy.world

Lol! Indeed. I guess that, in order for these configurations (especially the Option B, given potential imbalance on pitch and roll in Option A) to work, the ship must be really big. In reality, the three astronauts inside the cockpit shall be way smaller (but, then, they would be barely visible as subpixels in a 1440x1440 canvas)

@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works @artshare@lemmy.world

This, with an additional caveat: it must be two (or more pairs, always an even number of) rings sandwiched on top of each other inside the so there’s counterbalancing of the torque, otherwise it’d be more of a reaction wheel.

To be fair, most sci-fi shows seem to struggle with accurate mechanisms for gravity inside the ship, which is directly related to the ship’s size and shape… Which reminds me of how the ship from the Vogons (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) is, by far, the most unrealistic one, essentially being a gigantic cube inside of which the Vogons stand as they use loudspeakers (from the vacuum of the space) to announce their bureaucratic destruction procedures for Earth 😂

Still, I’d say USS Enterprise is the most iconic spaceship to me.

@panda_abyss@lemmy.ca @artshare@lemmy.world

To a certain extent, yes… but I guess it will depend on factors such as the length and the weight of the rings, the weight of the gravitating things sitting on the inner part of the rings (this would be, by far, the biggest contribution to imbalance, no matter the configuration of the rings, as different things, including people, with different weights would be standing on different places across each centrifuge) and the dimensions of the spacecraft, wherein the center of mass tends to be, even with both rings. In option A, the rings are supposed to be as closest as possible to each other, with enough gap for them to rotate without friction.

The main imbalance I can see is during ship’s rotation, especially roll and pitch, given how both configurations only account for yaw balance. So the ship must be as stationary as possible in relation to itself, only changing its attitude when really needed, and doing so in the slowest pace possible, no hurry needed. That’s also why I placed ionic thrusters instead of traditional rocket engines, as ionic thrusters are known to push things really slowly. This spaceship is meant to accelerate extremely slowly.

After I draw this schematics-art, I thought of further configurations, such as Option B with the rings inside a larger husk (so the ship would become more aerodynamic, while also adding some structural strength and weight to further dampen the torque imbalance). Another alternative, for the Option A, would be four rings instead of two, with a pair on the top (as it currently is) and an additional pair on the bottom, which would make the center of mass to match the center of mass of the ship’s hull.

Both options will kill the everyone in the rings because acceleration from the engines provides its own pseudo gravity. The ring would have to spin even faster to keep people from flying around when their part of the ring is pointing towards the node of the craft. And even with that compensation the people on anode would be pushing their brains out as they went from higher g to lower g as they spun

The rings need to go around the body, not on top

@Lumidaub@feddit.org @artshare@lemmy.world

lol