Communists on the moon !

[geoschmo]

Ok, I see what you and SJ are saying now Juri. Actually I wasn't talking about moving the base to a different orbit, but causing it to tumble, wobble etc, which would make docking difficult. I thought that's what Loser was saying too, but I reread it and see he was talking about actually changing position in space, so I was incorrect when I supported his point there. Movement of people around the inside won't cause the base to move to a different location, but it can have a minor effect on the orientation of the base, as demonstrated by the skylab astronauts. But as I was saying to Loser originally , even that effect would be infinetesimal when dealing with a base as large as what would likely be placed at an L4 L5 point.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

with flexible docking tubes and rotational slats to keep out the sunlight, it doesn't really matter if your spacestation wobbles on it's axis.

[Loser]

Y'all are correct. I have no idea what I was thinking, it's been a while since college and I'm afraid I haven't used physics much since then.

I still think there would be problems with orientation, which would not be corrected by placing the station in a Trojan orbit, but these would be more easily corrected. They could, in fact, be corrected without the expenditure of thruster fuel, but rather through the use of a powered gyroscope driven by whatever power source the rest of the station uses.

One more thing about the spinning wheel. Small changes in the distribution of mass around the wheel will change the point around which the wheel spins. This will change the strength of the illusionary 'gravity' throughout the wheel and could cause problems for any machinery sensitive to changes in it own 'weight'. Amusingly, the more mass you put on one side of the wheel the less 'weighty' things on that side will become.

[geoschmo]

The mass distribution could be compensated for by pumping fluid around from point to point in the structure. There will be plenty of fluid available, water, fuel, waste products. It would be a fairly simple matter of having resevoirs at various points around the station connected by tubes and pump it back and forth to keep things in balance. We do it now on airplanes and ships. It can even be done automatically by the computers.

[Suicide Junkie]

(Now I don't know what happened to space lab, maybe it was just built badly and that was the reason for its orbit deteriorating, the people inside jumping about surely weren't !) Just look at Mir... those russians had some wild parties up there

I think it was just in a low orbit, so the very slight atmospheric drag caused it to drop deeper and deeper over the months/years without thruster boosts.

[Narrew]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
The mass distribution could be compensated for by pumping fluid around from point to point in the structure. There will be plenty of fluid available, water, fuel, waste products. It would be a fairly simple matter of having resevoirs at various points around the station connected by tubes and pump it back and forth to keep things in balance. We do it now on airplanes and ships. It can even be done automatically by the computers.

NO, no, no, your almost correct, I read this real late Last night and was too tired to let you all know my master plan to solve the vibration issue...JELLO yep, thats right jello, that will take care of any vibration issue and a little treat for maintenance workers, heck there could be some radiation absorbing material added to the jello for shielding.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

no, no, no, giant shock absorber's attached to cosmic strings!