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Would rotating arms on a spacecraft (like in Sci-Fi movies) actually produce artificial gravity?

Asked by gorillapaws (30512points) June 14th, 2011

It’s pretty common in Sci-Fi movies to have a spacecraft with rotating arms that create artificial gravity for the craft. Would this really generate sufficient centrifugal force to create artificial gravity? Would those arms need to be moving very fast to achieve 1 G-force (I realize the math would be dependent on the length of the arms)? What about astronauts traveling up and down the length of the arm-shafts themselves, would the artificial gravity get stronger the further away they traveled from the central axis? Would they be constantly vomiting from motion sickness?

Are there other factors that would make this technology impractical or unrealistic, or other interesting consequences of a technology such as this?

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