Getting the Science Right, Part 2

[Brown]

An old (pre-manned-moon-landing) article in World Book described a spaceship to Mars that could fly like a conventional spacecraft. But while coasting (which is what it would be doing most of the time), it would extend a boom, thereby moving the system's center of mass out from the body of the inhabited part of the spaceship. The entire ship could then rotate around the displaced center of mass and there would be a modest amount of "gravity" in the inhabited part.

How one would get the system to begin rotating, and to stop rotating when it reached its destination, presents another problem. Some science fiction assumes that rockets and thrusters would be used. But extending a rotating mass also ought to work, though it may take a bit of time to get the system as a whole to stop or to rotate as fast as one might wish.

In the case of the Elysium wheel, there is a transport system along the ring (similar to what I described in one of my earlier posts). One way to get the Elysium wheel to rotate is to get all the cars on the transport system moving in the same direction. A potential benefit of such a transportation system is that it could serve as a feedback control system to keep the rotation constant.

 

[Grashtel]

Would this rough pic be feasible?
(Please excuse my poor MSPaint drawing skills)

The left hand ship is configured for when it's under thrust, not spinning

The right hand ship is configured for when it's coasting or in orbit, spinning on it's longitudinal axis.
The arms that rotate outward could even be tethers that extend outward as mentioned above.

The squares at the end of the arms would be the crews quarters - they'd also rotate.
When the ship is under thrust the floors would be oriented to the rear, therefore down would be towards aft.
When the ship is coasting or in orbit (& spinning on it's longitudinal axis), the floors would be oriented outward, therefore down would be out.

I think it would be easier to have the arms extend towards the back of the ship so that the crew quarters wouldn't have to rotate to keep the same surface as the floor while under thrust and the arms wouldn't have to be able to support the compressive load of their mass while under acceleration

 

[Lensman]

^^^ Good point ^^^