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

[El_Phil]

Starhawk said:
Question 2:

Okay so we all see on Star Trek and Bab 5 and yadda yadda that Artificial gravity is the ultimate sign of the advanced uber race well I have a question regarding this.

As we have seen in such things as Babylon 5 Earth Alliance and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident rotating sections is the poor mans way of getting gravity on a starship, so my question is this why if it is as simple as a rotating section does the US not crank out space ships with rotating sections?

What on earth do you want gravity for? It will massively increase the cost and complexity of said ship and remove the only reason for doing research in space, zero gravity. Other than that a space lab is just really expensive and not as good normal.

Seriously a rotating section on the shuttle, or the next version, would be horribly expensive and almost certainly decrease payload. You'd be chucking hundreds of tons of extra weight into space, just to make life a little easier for the shuttle crew. No real advantage and massive costs.