Re: A case for the eradication of unmanned Mars missions

Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Fri, 10 Dec 1999 22:48:06 -0800

> [Jeff Davis was] thinking about this method of supporting living tissue
> against
> the deforming and eventually injurious forces of high g loads--basically
> the idea of firing a person out of a cannon without killing them--but I've
> never run across a rigorous analysis or even a serious qualitative
> treatment of the subject...

Jeff, I did an experiment about 12 years ago at China Lake. We had a centrifuge, 2 meter radius. I and some guys were arguing about what would happen if you put an egg in a bucket of water in the centrifuge, would it sling to the bottom or continue to float? I argued that if the eggs were floating in 1 G, they would float in 100 G.

I bought a dozen guppies, put em in a plastic thermos bottle, put the bottle in the centrifuge and spun em up to 100 g for 10 minutes. When I stopped, all the fish were still alive, but were swimming in a spiral pattern, like a well-thrown football. {8-] Please dont turn me in to the animal rights people. {8^D spike