The cosmos is fraught with many mysteries, and we have just begun to study it. And one of the problems to be solved in the future is gravity.
What's wrong with her, you ask? But she is not! Or rather, not so. Gravity is always there, we experience it from the Earth, Moon, Sun, other stars and even the center of our galaxy. But the force of gravity that suits us exists only on Earth. And when we fly to other planets or plow space, what about gravity? You need to create it artificially.
Why do we need a certain amount of gravity?
On Earth, all organisms have adapted to the force of gravity equal to 9.8 m / s ^ 2. If it is greater, then the plants will not be able to grow up, and we will constantly experience pressure, because of which our bones will break and our organs will collapse. And if it is less, then we will have problems with the delivery of nutrients in the blood, muscle growth, etc.
When we develop colonies on Mars and the Moon, we will face the problem of reduced gravity. Our muscles partially atrophy, adapting to local gravity. But upon returning to Earth, we will begin to have problems with walking, dragging objects and even breathing. This is how it all depends on gravity.
And we already have an example of how this happens - the International Space Station.
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Astronauts on the ISS and why there is no gravity
Those who visit the ISS must exercise on treadmills and simulators every day. This is because during their stay, their muscles lose their "grip". In zero gravity, you don't need to lift your body, you can relax. This is how the body thinks. There is no gravity on the ISS, not because it is in space.
The distance from it to the Earth is only 400 kilometers, and the force of gravity at this distance is only slightly less than on the surface of the planet. But the ISS does not stand still - it rotates in the earth's orbit. It literally constantly falls to Earth, but its speed is so high that it does not allow it to fall.
That is why astronauts are in a state of weightlessness. But still. Why can't gravity be created on the ISS? This would make life easier for astronauts at times. After all, they are forced to spend several hours a day on physical exercises just to keep fit.
How to create artificial gravity?
In science fiction, the concept of such a spaceship has long been created. This is a huge ring that must constantly rotate around its axis. As a result, the centrifugal force "pushes" the astronaut away from the center of rotation, and he will perceive it as gravity. But problems arise when we face it in practice.
First, you need to consider the Coriolis force - the force that arises when moving in a circle. Without this, our astronaut will be constantly rocking, and this is not very fun. In this case, it is necessary to accelerate the rotation of the ring on the spacecraft to 2 revolutions per second, and this is a lot, the astronaut will be very unwell. To solve this problem, you need to increase the radius of the ring to 224 meters.
The ship is half a kilometer in size! We're not far from Star Wars. Instead of creating Earth's gravity, we'll first create a low-gravity ship that will hold the simulators. And only then we will build ships with huge rings to preserve gravity. By the way, the ISS is just going to build modules for creating gravity.
Today, scientists from Roscosmos and NASA are preparing to send centrifuges to the ISS, which are needed to create artificial gravity there. Astronauts no longer have to spend a lot of time exercising!
The problem with gravity at high accelerations
If we want to fly to the stars, then it will take 4.2 years to travel to the nearest Alpha Centauri A at a speed of 99% of the speed of light. But to accelerate to this speed, it will take tremendous acceleration. This means, and huge overloads, about 1000-4000 thousand times more than the earth's gravity. No one can stand this, and a spaceship with a rotating ring should be just gigantic, hundreds of kilometers away. You can build this, but is it necessary?
Unfortunately, we still don't fully understand how gravity works. And so far they have not figured out how to avoid the effect of such overloads. We will research, check, study.
