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[Owlbread]

How many fellows here enjoy Space Engine? I know I do.

[Drakale]

It's significantly easier to build a small station with a long tether and a counterweight than a torus big enough to avoid unbearable Coriolis effect.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Another thing they though about was making a station which has a small part that rotates that can be used by the inhabitants a certain amount of time each day to stop muscle/bone atrophy.

Which would be what I said six posts ago.

To elaborate, beds are considered ideal for this because you'll stay in them for hours without wanting to leave.

[WillowLuman]

Haven't head of the sleeping in the centrifuge before. Might work, but I say needs more study. Would be very handy, though, so here's hoping it proves feasible.

EDIT: Try searching "sleep in a centrifuge"

[WillowLuman]

Sorry for double post, but:

These are some of the luckiest people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE_USPTmYXM

[10ebbor10]

It's significantly easier to build a small station with a long tether and a counterweight than a torus big enough to avoid unbearable Coriolis effect.

Sadly, it's not very easy to move such a station, or dock with it. The tether, is after all, a nonrigid object, and the gyroscopic effect isn't helping. You'd need powerfull and properly synchronized bursts on both objects to be able to move in a meaningful fashion.

Docking would be equally problematic, as you're not docking at the center of the rotation. (After all, there's nothing there but a bunch of tether). Hence, you'd have to match the rotational velocity, wasting large amounts of fuel, and once you do dock, you would disturb the mass center of the object, deforming the rotation, with all kinds of weird effects.

[WillowLuman]

Centrifuge sleeping quarters are starting to sound very good in comparison.

[Drakale]

Its true that you need a docking station at the center of mass, and then shuttle along the cable from there. You could do very small correction to the orbit with timed trusts but yeah any complex maneuver is out. One interesting design for a mars mission involve the capsule and heat shield to be used on entry to be separated and rotated during the 8 month transit to create gravity and then reassembled prior to landfall.

[10ebbor10]

Yup, quite nice. Though these things too would exert a significant amount of gyroscopical force on the station. For comparison, the ISS has 4 gyroscopes (currently 3, as one is shut down) weighting 600 pounds (270 kg) each. Though these rotate a tiny bit faster than your centrifuge bed.

[10ebbor10]

Double post, but anyway.

GOCE is undergoing an uncontrolled reentry somewhere around now.

Nothing to panic about, as it most likely won't fall on inhabited areas Europe. And if it did, Russia (who launched the thing) would be responsible. Pieces aren't expected to be larger than 90 kg. Total spacecraft weights about a ton.

[alway]

Speaking of reentering things, here's a series of images from the recent ATV-4 reentry: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esa_events/sets/72157637345106796/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/05/atv_4_albert_einstein_pictures_of_it_burning_up_in_re_entry.html

[10ebbor10]

Anyway, GOCE deorbited , and disappeared somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Anecdotal evidence speaks about parts dropping down on the Korean Peninsula, but have not been confirmed.

[Gentlefish]

Headlines tomorrow:

RUSSIA DROPS SATELLITE ON BEST KOREA. BEST KOREA RETALIATES WITH TOTAL NUCLEAR WAR.

and then...

BEST KOREA ANNEXED BY SOUTH KOREA. BEST KOREANS CHEER.

[Dutchling]

This thread seems mildly interesting.

PTW.

[10ebbor10]

Interestingly, GOCE is the first ESA satellite to make an uncontrolled reentry in 25 years. Pretty sure it was planned to be an uncontrolled reentry.