Elon Musk Says Starship Will Spin for Artificial Gravity

Meanwhile, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is already thinking many steps ahead, envisioning what'll be like to travel on board the spacecraft all the way to Mars.SpaceX should try to spin its Dragon astronaut shuttle to test out spin gravity. "Even a tiny gravity vector is better than none."Perhaps most famously, the Discovery One spacecraft in the sci-fi epic "2001: A Space Odyssey" allowed its inhabitants to go for a jog around a rotating centrifuge.

There's a good reason behind all the trouble of spinning up a spacecraft in outer space. Scientists have discovered spending prolonged periods of time in microgravity can be detrimental to human health, including theHowever, some core issues arise in the implementation of such a spin. For one, a spacecraft would have to be quite large to spin at a reasonable rate to generate enough centrifugal force.

As astrophysics PhD Peter Hague pointed out in his reply to Musk's tweet, there's an alternative to having a single Starship spin around its own axis.that a spinning Starship would make keeping "cryo temps" and having "solar cells pointing in the right direction" a "big challenge."But covering the millions of miles between the Earth and Mars is a very different task that comes with its own host of challenges.

To be clear, SpaceX is still many years away from sending its Starship to Mars. The spacecraft has yet to even reach orbit, and hasHowever, given the health risks involved in spending months trapped on a small spacecraft on the way to Mars, it's perhaps wise to at least consider the use of artificial gravity — no matter how far-flung the idea.Subscribe to our daily newsletter to keep in touch with the subjects shaping our future.

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