h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A couple of questions on this one

1: How big would a 2001 style rotating space station have to be for you to be able to eat proper meals with gravy and for the toilet to work?

2: If you jump up in the air on that kind of space station do you come back down again?

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it would depend on how close to the axis you were

far away....yes

to close no just go all the way across untill you hit the opposite floor at some sort of relative speed

Thanks for the reply. This would be the whole centrifugal/ centrepetal? force thing going on of course. I don't understand why that still apples if you're not stuck to the edge.

I'm sure we've had one of these before, with slightly different questions. Rotating space stations are cool .

Every point of a rotating object is moving in a circle. Any object which moves in a circle is technically accelerating towards the centre of the circle*. This acceleration (Velocity*Velocity/Radius) needs to be close enough to the 9.81 metres/second/second that the Earth's gravity exerts.

So, your answer to 1) depends on how fast the space station is spinning. Note also that your head wants to be pointing towards the centre of the space station (unless you're standing on it).

*This is called centripetal acceleration. The particle does not actually get any closer to the centre, because it is carried along by its existing velocity. As if it were falling towards it, but kept missing.

2) If you jump in the air, you have an existing velocity, which is constant. The space station is still accelerating in a circle. As such, you will sort of float sideways and until you hit it again. If the space station is suitably large compared to the size of the jump, this will look like you just jumped straight up and fell straight back down (the same applies on Earth).