we all know that Elon builds starship with
one single end goal in mind to make
humanity a multiplanetary species but we
actually like to say a multi-world
species because we shouldn't forget the
moon which is not classified as a planet
but almost as big as a planet and to
that end
Elon wants to build a fleet of
thousand starships in order to
colonize the moon and Mars now while the
moon is only two days away which will
not pose any problems for the voyage a
six-month trip to Mars on the other hand
comes with many many problems such as
how to overcome zero-gravity how to
protect against cosmic rays how many
people can actually fit into starship
for a Mars trip and how could starship
get to Mars faster so let's look at the
first of these problems namely the
weightlessness or zero-g and how we
could create artificial gravity in
starship in order to arrive healthy and
safely at Mars
now there are many studies published in
peer-reviewed scientific journals
analyzing which detrimental effects a
zero gravity environment has on the
human body from countless long stay
experiments in orbit such as Scott
Kelly's extremely long stay of 342 days
aboard the ISS or Valeri Polyakov's
437 day world record stay aboard the
space station MIR in the 90s we have a
lot of data on that topic and we put the
links to some studies in the video
description so what are some of the
worst effects of weightlessness on the
human body
well reduced immune function reduced
blood oxygenation a higher risk for
cardiovascular disease and even possible
adverse genomic and cognitive changes
meaning possible reduced intelligence in
addition eyesight is also decreased then
also bone and muscle loss which can be
counteracted by exercising to some
extent but this is not enough to
completely stop it
the calcium from the bones dissolved in
blood stream then leads to a higher risk
of kidney stones so there are some quite
severe detrimental effects of
weightlessness on to the human body and
we know that currently a trip to Mars on
board of Starship is estimated to take
about six months this is a very long
time which is long enough so that we
will certainly witness some of these
detrimental effects on our future Mars
settlers now of course we don't want
people to arrive on Mars in extremely
bad shape not even being able to stand
upright or to perform the simplest tasks
and we don't want our future Mars
settlers to suffer from any negative
long-term health effects therefore it's in
our opinion highly advisable to create
artificial gravity on board of
starship for future trips to and from
Mars but how can it be done well we
don't have artificial gravity technology
yet even though some conspiracy theory
people of course would immediately want
to make us believe that but there is not
a single conclusive peer-reviewed paper
out there with an experiment which has
been verified and also repeated which
would have been able to create
artificial gravity in a lab so then we
only have one other option rotation we
have to rotate starship in some way in
order to create artificial gravity by
means of centrifugal acceleration so how
could we accomplish that let's look at
some possibilities one rotation along
the longitudinal axis of course it would
be the easiest to just let starship
rotate around its longitudinal axis
after all starship's crew quarters have
an interior diameter of eight meters
unfortunately this is a quite small
diameter even smaller than the famous
centrifuge from 2001 a Space Odyssey
which had a diameter of 11.5 meters now
in order to achieve a 1g effect in such
a small diameter we can do a quick
calculation and we get 15 rpm the value
is quite high however newer research
based on data from centrifuge training
indicates that with some adaptation time
and training most people might be able
to adapt to such high rpms we will put
the link to this paper into the
description which is highly interesting
but we might also be able to reduce the
gravity to say 0.5 G then we'd already
be at 10 rpm which probably would be a
lot easier for most people to adapt to
and 0.5 G even though only 50% of earth
gravity certainly is a lot better for
the body on six-month trip than zero-g
right our awesome viewer Geoff even made some drawings how the interior of
starship might look like to scale
now instead of rotating the whole of
starship his suggestion is
to have only the crew sections rotate of
course in both cases we would need
gyroscopes to stabilize starship in
order to avoid it wobbling around chaotically in space we have to say we
really like his idea as it would be
absolutely doable simple and elegant it
will not require a high degree of
engineering sophistication as other
possible solutions would the only
downsides of course would be that we
would have quite high rpms which might
take some time to get used to and we
wouldn't be able to make effective use
of all the interior space of starship
but we should certainly keep this idea
very high up as a viable possible
solution to solve the rotation problem
for starship and another solution would
of course be 2 rotating starship along
its short axis here we would also need
to use gyroscopes to stabilize the
rotation we know that starship is quite
large right in fact it's 50 metres long
that means that should we rotate it
around its short axis and of course also
carefully balance the weight
distribution such as the two ends of
starship have the same weight we could
work with a much bigger rotation radius
namely 25 metres in this case we would
get a much more comfy 6 rpm for 1g
or 4.23 RPM for 0.5 G now this would of course
be a bit weird since the crew quarters
then would have to be mounted upside down
because the rotation would press the
people into the nosecone direction and
the viewing gallery on board of starship
as it's called would feel like the
bottom where we would also feel the
strongest gravity the crew quarters
further towards the center would feel
less gravity so rotating starship along
its short axis is certainly an
interesting solution but getting the
weight distribution right here might be
a problem but there are more solutions
three docking two starships together at
the aft section and rotate them now it gets
really interesting why only one starship
when we can use two at the same time and
we know that for orbital refuelling they
dock already
aft to aft therefore why not dock them
and let them rotate around their common
center of gravity which would be exactly
at the docking endpoint here we would not
need to carefully balance the starship
because both starships would be
identical with identical cargo weight
and crew complement therefore we
wouldn't need additional delicate
balancing efforts also an additional
plus would be the even larger rotation
radius of now 50 meters
this means 4.23 rpms at 1g and 3 rpms at 0.5 G there is an
excellent tool by the way called
spincalc link in the description to
quickly calculate the rotation speed for
different G factors and radii here we
would of course still have to build the
crew quarters upside down but the effect
of different gravities for the crew
sections and the viewing gallery would
be decreased compared to a single
rotating starship also very good
solution what others are there 4
tethering two starships now this solution
might require some additional effort to
reinforce the starship nosecone section
and also some quite strong Kevlar tether
but the idea is simply to tether two
starships together and to let them
rotate around their common center of
gravity we could for example make the
tether 100 metres long so that we would
get a rotation radius of 50 meters at
the nose cone of starship this again
means 4.23 rpms at 1g and 3 rpm at
0.5 G we could make the tether even
longer and thus get even smaller rpms
this idea would allow starship's crew
quarters to be built in regular fashion
so not upside down and also to achieve
quite low rpms but of course it would
imply higher risks because if the tether
breaks that would be extremely bad and
also we need some seriously reinforced
starship nosecone sections or in
general a very sturdy and rigid starship
hull in order to withstand all the
centrifugal force but certainly also a
very interesting possibility but wait
there's even another one five arranging
a rotating ring around starship now this
here certainly represents the ultimate
solution but unfortunately of course
also the most difficult one to realize
we would need to construct a
habitation ring made out of let's say as
an example four Bigelow BA330 habitat
modules in orbit and then dock the
habitation ring with starship in orbit
we could experiment with different radii
a radius of between fifteen to thirty
meters for example might turn out to be
best regarding construction cost and G
value four Bigelow habitat modules would
offer as much as 1320 cubic meters of
interior volume therefore more than
doubling the available volume of
starship which is less with thousand
cubic meters
each of the modules will be connected to
each other but also to starship via two
meter diameter tubes through which
people could get from starship to the
modules or vice versa or from one module
to another not too dissimilar from the
endurance spaceship in the movie
interstellar now of course this solution
would require a much higher engineering
effort and will have higher costs than
the previous rotation solutions however
this here would also increase the living
space of the astronauts therefore
allowing for more people the journey to
Mars we personally would put the
sleeping quarters inside starship so the
crew would sleep in zero-g because while
sleeping one doesn't need a lot of space
so the limited volume aboard starship
should be ok for up to hundred people
and then on average about 25 persons
during awaking hours per BA330 module
which would serve as a common meeting
area and also offer working space or
space for activities of all kinds all of
course in a comfy 1g environment oh and
the Bigelow ring would be left of course
in Mars orbit waiting for the next
starship for the return trip to earth
the habitation rings will of course
always remain in orbit and never land on
a planet and they would be in constant
circulation from Earth to Mars and then
back from Mars to earth of course every
two years when there is a launch window
so which solution to the zero-g problem
is in your opinion the best we are curious
to know so tell us in the comments section
and we'll discuss with you of course and
this is the first episode of our fixing starship's flaws series so if you are new
to our channel don't forget to subscribe
such that you don't miss any future
episodes so this was the JS space report
which we now also do on Fridays and then
I would say on 2 the future
