Thursday, December 18, 2025

Is it possible to create artificial gravity on a space station?

 Yes it is but it must be designed for it. The key of course is spinning to create artificial gravity. This was shown in 2001 a Space Odyssey. If you have the need for a large space station to house a lot of people it could be something like this.

There is little or no gravity in the center hub and ships can dock there if they match the spin. The outer portion has gravity due to the spin (centripetal force). This of course would require a lot of launches and a long time to build. They don’t say what the diameter is but it would have to be at least a couple of hundred meters to not have vertigo due to gravity differences at your head and feet I am told.

A simpler possibility for say 2 Starships going to Mars is a simple tether connecting the noses of the ships. It might look about like this.

With a 300 meter cable and a slow spin of 1.5 RPM you get Mars normal gravity. The issues with this is no other craft can dock most likely. However, the two ships could spin themselves up slowly with attitude thrusters. They just have to de-spin to do anything meaningful like a course correction or preparing to enter the atmosphere. You might be able to save mass with a 200 meter cable and a slightly faster spin.