[geoschmo]

Originally posted by JurijD:
THE SPINNING SHIP PROBLEM:

2. The obvious solution to this issue is to build a wheel that has a radious more than 100x the normal height of a person (heeh... big, yes... very big) althugh this might be impractical and almost impossible to do now it might be in the future... but sadly its the only solution physics offers us for now...

I think there is a less material intensive method then a giant wheel. Couldn't you build two ships of equal mass, and then tether them together by a long strong cable and rotate them around a common axis?

I could see the "ship" would actually be two ships that are firmly clamped together during launch, complex manuvers and whatnot. But during the bulk of the trip which would be either straight coasting or straight ahead acceleration they could be detached and a cable reeled out of both of them which would allow them to get the neccesary radius for normal gravity within each ship.

There could be one of more counterwieghts crawling back and forth along this cable by means of computer control to balance out any fluctuations if there are any. You could either ahve all the crew on one half and equipment in the other, or the crew could move from one half toe the other when neccesary along the cable.

Geoschmo