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Can The Human Body Handle Rotating Artificial Gravity?

Name: Can The Human Body Handle Rotating Artificial Gravity?
Description: Scott Manley surveys the research on whether people can adapt to rotating artificial gravity, from early Soviet centrifuge tests to modern studies. He concludes it is an engineering problem and discusses Coriolis effects and station radius.

Scott Manley Explainers

Open on YouTube First HN thread

2 HN users recommended this explainer in 2 different months between 2021 and 2025.

2007–2026

2 recommendations 3 citations HackerTube score 2

Linked as the clear explainer on rotational gravity and its Coriolis oddities.

Scott Manley surveys the research on whether people can adapt to rotating artificial gravity, from early Soviet centrifuge tests to modern studies. He concludes it is an engineering problem and discusses Coriolis effects and station radius.

Pull quote: “Scott Manley has a great video on artificial gravity in space” (HN, 2022)

Also tagged: artificial gravity, rotating space stations, coriolis effect, spaceflight, human adaptation, scott manley

What Hacker News said

5 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Recommends samwillis December 2021 under NASA's new sleeping bags could prevent eyeball 'squashing' on the ISS

Shows rotating artificial gravity is feasible at ISS scale, radius as small as 40m.

Scott Manley did a video looking at this, it’s a good and informative watch: [this video] The gist is that is actually doable at the same(ish) scale as the ISS. Bigger is better but we can do it at a radius as little at 40m.

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Recommends deepdriver July 2022 under Japanese researchers propose a concept for making artificial gravity on the moon

Covers artificial gravity concepts including early Soviet centrifuge tests in space.

YouTuber Scott Manley has a great video on artificial gravity in space, including concepts that resemble the article's proposal: [this video] Before I watched the video, I didn't know the Soviet Union tested a (small) centrifuge for artificial gravity in space back in the 70s: [link]

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Citations, criticism and jokes

Cites it throwaway290 July 2022 under Japanese researchers propose a concept for making artificial gravity on the moon

Discusses Coriolis effect and oddities of rotational gravity.

Does this address the Coriolis effect and other issues that make rotational "gravity" feel really weird compared to actual gravity (6:58 [this video] )?

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Cites it EGreg May 2024 under Drug resistant bacteria found on ISS mutating to become functionally distinct

Explains Coriolis problems of rotation-based gravity.

Why not just use rotation to generate artificial gravity via centrifugal force? I guess the answer could be that the sideways motion will drive you crazy due to coriolis forces? See 6 minutes in [this video] But they can just substitute windows with monitors that compensate for the view. Incidentally, the viewscreens on Star Trek etc. always had the ship right side up, so they probably compensated exactly in this way :)

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Cites it MobiusHorizons June 2025 under Starcloud can’t put a data centre in space at $8.2M in one Starship

Relevant discussion of rotating gravity and its effects on movement.

Relevant Scott Manley video: [this video] Relevant tom Scott video: [link] There is a lot of research, but it’s not as simple as operating under real gravity. Makes many movements harder and can result in getting sick.

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