Semi-OT: A General Tech Question Thread for me :)

[El_Phil]

That would work as well, the problem would be the inertia. Just because you stopped powering the spin doesn't mean it will suddenly stop, there's no resistance (or practically none) in space so you have to apply power to stop the spin. Not a big problem granted, you got it spinning in the first place after all.

Gravity plating. Wonderfull and how do you propose for this to work? Last I checked you needed mass for gravity.

Lets see how you would get this. OK use Newtonian gravitational theory, its fine for practical stuff involving small fields. And its a hell of alot simpler.

So to get earth strength gravity you need about 6E24 kilograms, or the mass of the earth, at a distance of ~ 6400 km. This isn't really practical to lug around, but your plating is on the floor! Say under a few cm of carpet (or funky futuristic space floorboards) lets say its 1 cm down. So you only need 9E15 kgs of mass to create that much gravity. Tricky. Oh and it's unidirectional so your crew on the deck below are being attracted to the ceiling.

Frankly I can't see how you can ever get that into plating and then directional. But I'd like to hear this theory that would be fine.