[Suicide Junkie]

Originally posted by Loser:
I will stand by my contention that the constant, semi-random displacement forces involved in real people living their lives inside a spinning-wheel space station are sufficient to make the concept wholly impractical without significantly different means of station-keeping. Every bit of thruster fuel has to be lifted to orbit as well, and I contend, as well, that it will be expended at a fairly rapid pace.

I will allow that Lagrange points four and five may compensate for this, but I wouldn't hold that up as certain until I get a better grip on the scale of the forces involved on both sides.

As I so not expect anyone here to come up with a nice, concise, understandable model that will prove this one way or another, I'm perfectly happy to leave the discussion as it stands. I have pointed out everything I think is involved, and I think you and I have different expectations where the scale of the disturbing forces are concerned, Geo.

Of course, if someone does want to do the math and whip up a nice computer model, I would be overjoyed to get my hands on the toy.

Assuming everything stays inside the station, the center of mass will remain in a consistent position.
If you set up the station to be initially stationary at the L-points, the center of mass will remain there no matter what the people inside do, due to newton's laws.

When you open airlocks to let people and cargo in and out, you will only need to compensate once. Given a large station, and reasonable care the motions induced by external traffic will be minor.

Using an Ion thruster or even a magnetic sail to maintain stationkeeping would be very useful too. Very little thrust, but you have plenty of time and don't need to accelerate much.