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Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

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Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#101

Post by eru »

vintermann wrote: post #97
jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild idea: build one on earth to simulate 1.1G (or higher; whatever would still be comfortable) and put gyms, hotels, swimming pool, living quarters, etc. in it. Being in it for extended periods of time would build up muscles and bones. That would likely be something that fitness people and professional athletes would be interested in. And it's a good dry run for building and operating these things on Mars and the Mo…

Spinning stuff in air takes more energy than spinning stuff in a vacuum.

You would likely put these in air on the moon as well. Depends a bit on your design.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#102

Post by eru »

actionfromafar wrote: post #83
jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild idea: build one on earth to simulate 1.1G (or higher; whatever would still be comfortable) and put gyms, hotels, swimming pool, living quarters, etc. in it. Being in it for extended periods of time would build up muscles and bones. That would likely be something that fitness people and professional athletes would be interested in. And it's a good dry run for building and operating these things on Mars and the Mo…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilting_train

You don't need to have a tilting train, you can just tilt the track.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#103

Post by eru »

Nevermark wrote: post #93
scotty79 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the commenters here has the right idea. Train riding forever on circular slanted track could easily house some living spaces, offices and gyms. You could book a stay there for few weeks and after that feel like you are walking on air once you come back to normal life.

Circular dome colony over a very large rotating space, running on concentric rings of superconducting rails. Spokes of slidable inner-outer weights to counter balance its residence’s movements. Running on reliable constant nuclear power, from a safe distance. Maximum gravity at the tilted edges. Only natural gravity at the center. Enter & exit from a tunnel that connects under the center. Aside from the challenges of…

> Being able to quickly “adjust” gravity, by moving location, will be significant.

Who is doing the adjusting and the moving?

I don't think you'd want to move anything large. You'd build eg your factory in the environment where it's best; and build a second factory in a different environment, instead of moving them around.

However, if you eg making computer chips, you might move those around between different environments, depending on the processing step.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#104

Post by eru »

terribleperson wrote: post #80
corlinp wrote: post #43

Finally I get to be that guy in the comments with a weird about of relevant experience. I built the world's largest hamster wheel in 2012[1], a large rotating circular platform ~6m in diameter. It was a fun and unique experience to run on for a short amount of time, but most people would get dizzy after a few minutes of jogging on it. The curved platform also turned out to be a bit of a tripping hazard. It was more o…

If this dizziness is anything like VR sickness, you can become acclimated to it.

And you might actually just wear VR (or augmented reality, AR) goggles to counteract it.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#105

Post by eru »

safety1st wrote: post #42
SimianLogic wrote: post #26

Is there a reason something like a water rower wouldn’t work on the moon? Possibly with a weighted vest or a weighted seat. Rowing is pretty full body and doesn’t seem that reliant on gravity.

I'm always baffled that these studies don't put more emphasis on resistance training, since the main issue is that your body no longer has to resist the forces of gravity on a day-to-day basis. In theory exercises like the major compound lifts should go a long way because they stimulate almost every muscle in the body. You get a lot of sustained muscle growth out of doing big lifts even just 2-3 times of week. Of cou…

> In theory exercises like the major compound lifts should go a long way because they stimulate almost every muscle in the body. You get a lot of sustained muscle growth out of doing big lifts even just 2-3 times of week.

Keep in mind that you are doing your 3 squat sessions a week on top of a whole week of lugging your own body around in 1g.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#106

Post by eru »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #88
purpleidea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very expensive. The plan needs serious improving.

Looks cheaper than the Apollo program when adjusted for inflation (Apollo was $257 billion in 2023 dollars)

If you want to make it look even cheaper, you can adjust for GDP growth instead.

(It's still very expensive in absolute terms, and you can have a discussion about whether it's really the best use of tax payer funds.)

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#107

Post by gadders »

eru wrote: post #100
gadders wrote: post #96

>>Long-lasting exposure to low gravity, such as in lunar settlements planned by the ongoing Artemis Program, elicits muscle hypotrophy, bone demineralization, cardio-respiratory and neuro-control deconditioning, against which optimal countermeasures are still to be designed. Rather than training selected muscle groups only, ‘whole-body’ activities such as locomotion seem better candidates, I don't get why whole body…

> I don't get why whole body locomotion would be the best way to combat muscle hypotrophy and bone demineralisation when that is not the best method on earth. Whole body locomotion is approximately the only way we have ever tried on earth to combat muscle hypotrophy. So we don't know whether that's the best method or not: we just haven't tried anything else. To be more precise, any method we have tried on earth, be t…

Got you. So we would need to do the experiment to try resistance training in low/no gravity to see whether it would work or not.

It would seem like the obvious thing to try though as it is the best method in regular gravity.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#108

Post by persolb »

scotty79 wrote: post #92
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that there is some gravity, putting on a weighted suit to increase their mass would also make sense, although it'd be unwieldy if it's not distributed exactly the same. Plus, getting weight into space is expensive... although probably not as expensive as building a wall of death or spin gravity structure.

Why wall of death? It's gonna be just a neat cylindrical room with vaguely paraboloid walls. Even if you stop running suddenly, dropping down from 2-3 meters in 1/6 g shouldn't be anything more than inconvenient. Weighted suit wouldn't help with the weight of your organs. They are accustomed to hanging inside you at 1g. Running on wall would provide them with that.

I was going to say “I’d be surprised if organ support is a large issue to an adult. We already have long term astronauts and people who are bed ridden for a long time during recovery. I would expect an issue during development though.”

Turns out there is research in this direction: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2379624/pdf/can...

It seems to say that there is a long term impact on connective tissue hardening… but it blames lack of stretching; not lack of downward force. Any regular movement would seem to fix that.

However, internally, organ tissue probably ‘bounces’ more due to gravity during movement… so less gravity means less flex of connective tissue.

TLDR: you seem to be right

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#109

Post by eru »

gadders wrote: post #107
eru wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't get why whole body locomotion would be the best way to combat muscle hypotrophy and bone demineralisation when that is not the best method on earth. Whole body locomotion is approximately the only way we have ever tried on earth to combat muscle hypotrophy. So we don't know whether that's the best method or not: we just haven't tried anything else. To be more precise, any method we have tried on earth, be t…

Got you. So we would need to do the experiment to try resistance training in low/no gravity to see whether it would work or not. It would seem like the obvious thing to try though as it is the best method in regular gravity.

Oh, it's definitely something we should try. We need a lot more experiments.

The only thing we know for sure is that moving around in 1g is generally enough for our bodies. Especially once you throw in a bit of deliberate exercise. We also already know from our space stations that 0g is bad for you, and even exercise can only mitigate some of the damage.

But that's already the limit of our definite knowledge.

But we don't know where the boundaries are, and whether the transition is smooth. Eg I would suspect 0.01g to be still pretty bad, and 0.99g to be indistinguishable from earth for our bodies. But would 0.9g be enough? Probably yes, but who knows? What about 0.5g? Is it bad? Is it 50% as bad as 0g?

Would 0.2g give you 80% of the benefits of 1g? We don't know.

Re: Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements

#110

Post by scoopr »

amstan wrote: post #77
jillesvangurp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild idea: build one on earth to simulate 1.1G (or higher; whatever would still be comfortable) and put gyms, hotels, swimming pool, living quarters, etc. in it. Being in it for extended periods of time would build up muscles and bones. That would likely be something that fitness people and professional athletes would be interested in. And it's a good dry run for building and operating these things on Mars and the Mo…

Why did nobody do this yet? It would totally be a great prototype for stuff in orbit.

I just keep thinking about this short film[0] that explores the views you can see with rotational artificial gravity, and how nauseating it could be :)

[0] https://vimeo.com/869858712 also available as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiPmgW21rwY

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