NASA Wants You! (To Sit in a Spinning Room)

slinted writes: "Bottomquark recently posted that Nasa scientists are looking for a few good men (5"8' or less) to participate in hypergravity experiments. The experiments entail 7 'habitation sessions,' 5 of which will last up to 22 hours of spinning at up to 2G in a chamber 7.6 feet long and 6 feet wide. Since the experiments are at Ames Research Center, in Mountain View CA, this might be perfect for some techies 'in between projects.'"

Comments

Re:More like 4.5 G, right?

[Spamalamadingdong]

If I remember my high school physics, centripedal acceleration was a = v^2/r. If we assume the 58 feet mentioned in the article is the radius of the thing, we get 364.4 ft for the diameter.

No, the diameter would be 116 feet. The circumference would be 364.4 feet.

But if you really remembered your physics you'd know that a = r. From r and a you can calculate directly, or vice versa.

They mention 15 rev/min, which is 0.25 rev/s, making the velocity of the people compartment 91.1 ft/s. Doing the math, (91.1^2/58) gives you 4.47 G, right?

.25 * 58 feet * .3048 meter/ft = 1.10 m/sec&sup2. I'd assume that there's an error in the article or in your analysis (I'm being booted off and don't have time to check now).