What is stopping people getting dizzy on board the generation ship 'Spinny McSpinface'?

Spinny McSpinface is an ancient generation ship, invented and launched before the creation of Wrap drive and recently arrived at its original destination of A Long Way from Anywhere V. All the crew are long dead because of reasons (possibly related to them trying to reverse the polarity of the life support systems).

Its design is pretty standard for such unenlightened times. As no fake gravity (no, not artificial gravity, fake gravity) systems were available, the ship resembles a spinning cylinder with thrusters at both ends and the direction of 'down' oriented away from the cylinder's central axis. Old records reveal there were plans for an ocean in the middle of the ship, but that particular design feature was scrapped.

The ship is half a kilometre across, has a thickness of 100m and spins at just under 2RPM, giving an effective gravity inside the cylinder of between 0.6G (nearest the centre) and 1G (nearest the outer skin).

The issue with this crude method of simulating gravity is the coriolis effect, and most notably its effects on the human inner ear. This would be especially noticeable as people moved from one deck to another.

There was no room on board Spinny McSpinface for large quantities of antikinetosis medication, so the poor unfortunates that boarded the generation ship all those aeons ago must have some way of dealing with the inevitable disorientation.

The question our scientists need answered is how?

ADDENDUM:

The intent of this question was not to find a minimum radius to avoid the inner ear effects. It was intended as a 'given the radius is too small to avoid adverse effects, how do we deal with that'?

If you want to pick a smaller radius and higher rate of rotation so the effects are more noticeable, feel free to do so, just assume that the spin rate is high enough to cause issues.

posted almost 8 years ago

Joe Bloggs‭

26 reputation 41 2 3 0