For those who REALLY want to get away from it all

[Art Blade]

Erm, I'll take both.  :-D

[Binnatics]

You guys think it's possible to develop a 3D printer that uses clay as raw material? That could augment the possibilities immensely, since a simple baking procedure could create stuff as hard as a rock...

[fragger]

Centrifugal force as a form of artificial gravity would actually take a little getting used to. Because of a phenomenon known as the Coriolis Effect, you would feel a continuous pulling sensation opposite the direction of spin. It would be like your feet were continually trying to slide out from under you. The amount of Coriolis force would be determined by the combination of the size of the carousel and the speed at which it is rotating. Inside a really, really big rotating cylinder like the one in Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama (an alien construct with a diameter of about twenty kilometers) the effect would be too negligible to feel, but in a carousel the size of the one on board the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the effect would be quite noticeable. People would get used to it after a while, but if you could see them inside the carousel they would all be leaning slightly to compensate for the Coriolis Effect. If you jumped straight up into the air, you would land in a different place from where you were before the jump. If two people are directly opposite one another in the carousel and one person tries to throw an object directly to the other person, the object will actually travel at an angle and land at a point trailing the other person in relation to the direction of spin. Interestingly, to an outside observer the object would appear to travel in a straight line, but to the two people inside the carousel it would appear to travel in a curve. Similarly, if you try to pour liquid from a bottle into a glass from a height, you would have to position the glass so that it is behind the bottle in relation to the direction of spin in order to successfully catch the liquid.

There's a cool little demo of the Coriolis Effect here:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt_XJp77-mk

There is a ride in an amusement park in Sydney called The Rotor (I'm sure this type of thing exists elsewhere in the world). It's a solid-walled cylinder in which the riders stand with their backs to the wall while it slowly spins up until a certain speed is reached, whereupon the floor moves down and leaves everybody pinned against the wall by the centrifugal force. Over the years there has been the occasional silly daredevil who will try to sit up or even stand while the ride is going, and injury sometimes results when the unexpected Coriolis Effect pulls them over and sends them tumbling back against the wall (and sometimes on top of other riders). A carousel on board a spacecraft wouldn't have to rotate as fast as the Rotor does since there's no external gravity field to overcome, but the pulling sensation would still be there, albeit greatly reduced.

Still, I don't think it would take very long to get used to.

[Art Blade]

interesting conversation, guys. Fragger, thanks for that vid about the Coriolis Effect :)

The first time I came across the term Coriolis Effect was in some game, I think CoD, when I was on a sniper mission and had to take out a target that was rather far away. The instructor mentioned all kinds of things to take into account such as wind but also the Coriolis Effect, however without explaining it. I had to look it up which back then wasn't as easy as it sounds today.  :-D That vid of yours is just brilliant showing the effect from various angles. :-X

[JRD]

Nice insight fragger  :-X

This effect would take some getting used to for sure bur since we already experience this sort of effect, it would be just a matter of getting used to it on a different scale (or to model the centrifuge to create an effect similar to the one we experience here on Earth)

Binn, your comment made me think of using Mar's dust to create clay. That would represent an unlimited supply of material for a Mars colony to evolve.

Come to think of all that, it is amazing how the thought of populating a new planet can create solutions for problems we face here. Using clean energy, recycling water and pretty much anything else and being able to build stuff using 3D printers and clay...... we should be focusing on doing it right here and right now instead of putting all that effort into a spceship and sending it out in the space.  ????

[Art Blade]

 :-X

[fragger]

Very true JRD :-X

[mandru]

There are already companies that are developing methods and machinery to 3D print houses and other buildings with concrete.


The need to heat clay hot enough to turn it to porcelain or ceramic might be problematic depending on energy availability and I'm not sure adobe can be squirted through a nozzle with enough accuracy to be useful.  :-\\

Mrs mandru teaches classes in the use of precious metal clay that can be molded or hand formed like any modeling clay but when it's kiln fired (depending on the variety) becomes bronze copper or 99.9 fine silver.  There's also gold clay but it's so expensive an ounce it's hardly worth buying to experiment with for jewelry making.

Any of those clays can be diluted with water into slip (that looks like thick muddy water) and can be brushed onto a surface to either coat or be built up in layers after each previous layer has completely dried.  As long as there are no points where a later layer is needed to be larger than the layer beneath it (no undercuts) it would be possible to have a printer deposit the layers but there would still be the need to fire the finished piece to harden it to the finished metal stage.

[Art Blade]

wow, that is cool, mandru, metal clay to play around with and then kiln-fire it to make it solid metal ??? :) :-X

[Binnatics]

That is cool indeed. On an aside; weightlessness would be a great advantage for 3D printers, since there would be no problem anymore creating stuff with undercuts. Every drop of material extracted from the printer would float on  its spot until being connected to the rest of the structure. 

[fragger]

Great bit of info mandru, nothing like that had ever occurred to me :-X Not that I w@&k with clay very much :-()