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Artificial gravity breaks free from science fiction

Prof. Torin Clark demonstrates the human test centrifuge

Artificial gravity has long been the stuff of science fiction. Picture the wheel-shaped ships from films like听2001: A Space Odyssey听补苍诲听The Martian, imaginary craft that generate their own gravity by spinning around in space.

Now, a team from CU Boulder is working to make those out-there technologies a reality.听

The researchers, led by aerospace engineer Torin Clark, can鈥檛 mimic those Hollywood creations鈥攜et. But they are imagining听听that might fit within a room of future space stations and even moon bases. Astronauts could crawl into these rooms for just a few hours a day to get their daily doses of gravity. Think spa treatments, but for the effects of weightlessness.

The group hopes that its work will one day help keep astronauts healthy as they venture into space, allowing humans to travel farther from Earth than ever before and stay away longer.

But first, Clark鈥檚 team will need to solve a problem that has plagued proponents of artificial gravity for years: motion sickness.听

鈥淎stronauts experience bone loss, muscle loss, cardiovascular deconditioning and more in space. Today, there are a series of piecemeal countermeasures to overcome these issues,鈥 said Clark, an assistant professor in the听Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. 鈥淏ut artificial gravity is great because it can overcome all of them at once.鈥

Read the full story and watch the video at听CU Boulder Today.