Artificial Gravity

Question

Is it possible to make the artificial gravity for space station to work by using the Permanent Magnet (PM) technology to float/rotate and balance out the inner floor/living quarters to counter-rotate the outer rotating station when creating gravity? Thank you so much.

These are different but slightly related questions (artificial gravity and magnetic fields) that you might find interesting: Alternatives to centripetal force and constant acceleration to simulate Earth-like gravity and Proposed methods to use electromagnetic force to replace gravity beyond boots? — uhoh, Dec 07 '19 at 07:46
I think the answer is "no" because the direction that we feel the artificial gravity "pulling" us is away from the rotational axis. If it's a rotating cylinder, then we would stand on the inside surface of the cylinder and feel as though we were being pulled to it. The only thing a counter-rotation would do would be to prevent us from rotating and then there would be no artificial gravity effect. I think that this answer effectively answers "no" to your question. This would be too weak — uhoh, Dec 07 '19 at 07:49
Hi @Rodmant I see that someone with the exact same user asked this first in Astronomy SE and then followed advice there to ask here. (Because both users are unregistered I can't tell if both of these are the same user.) It's strongly discouraged to ask the identical question on multiple SE sites, so it's best if you delete the other copy. Thanks, and Welcome to Space! — uhoh, Dec 07 '19 at 08:05

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 07 '19 at 08:57

For artificial gravity to work well, you need a really large station: if the station is too small, there are side effects that would make the experience very unpleasant. You need a diameter of 100-200 m.

Current thinking is to achieve this by having two habitable modules with a truss or cable between them, and spinning the entire station. The simplest way to rotate these is using rocket thrusters.

Rotating the living quarters inside an outer shell is inefficient: you've doubled the weight of the station for very little benefit. If you do go this route, magnetic bearings are feasible. But they're only a tiny part of the problems you have to solve to get to an artificial gravity system.

Artificial Gravity

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