I love your blog, it's super interesting! I have a 2 part question about Space Stations with rotational artificial gravity. 1) how would spaceships dock with it? Would they have to match the rotational speed? And 2) if only Part of the station spins, how do occupants move from the Artificial Gravity part to the Zero G part?
Perhaps the best (real as “most realistic”) example is the orbital station shown in 2001:A Space Odyssey. This docking scene not only shows things that are possible and plausible, it sets the orbital ballet to the music of The Blue Danube by Strauss.Take a couple of minutes to watch the docking sequence and enjoy the experience.
At about a minute into the clip, you can see the PanAm Clipper (”The Sky is No Longer the Limit!”) staring to match the stations rotation. Once that happens, the shuttle can enter the docking bay without a problem. At about 1:47, you see the view of the station from the now-rotating shuttle. Because they are both rotating in the same direction at the same speed, they can easily dock.
Even though this film was made in 1968, it shows that Kubrick’s special effects people understood how things move in space.
As for transferring from the zero-g part to the part with gravity, its a simple as going ‘down’ until you reach the hub. Within the docking area at the center, you’re so close to the center of rotation that you don’t feel hardly any centrifugal force at all, so you just careful float over to the lift that takes you down to the hub.Some stations designs have a central core that does not rotate with the rest of the station. Discovery, the spaceship in 2001 has an internal rotational ring, so you have to transfer from a non-rotating part to the rotating part.
As you move away from the center of rotation, you ‘speed up’, and the centrifugal force you feel, and therefore the gravity you perceive, will increase.
For more information on rotational gravity, I direct you to Project Rho - a website that goes into professional-level detail about spaceships and spaceflight. WARNING: It is very math heavy.