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Suppose you had a very large pipe, say 20 meters in diameter, open to space at the hub of a spinning station, and leading off radially from the hub towards the rim, where the pipe is sealed. After which some air is pumped in the rim side of the pipe.

Would the centrifugal force (or centripetal force requirement .. whatever) keep the air in the pipe so that you could have an open dock for, say, repairing satellites? (e.g. the satellite is brought to the station by a tug, grabbed and dragged down the pipe, where some tech refuels it or replaces the batteries or whatever).

Also how much of a problem would heat loss be? and what other problems are there with this idea? (would the air quickly dissipate?)

Assume that the station is spinning at a speed which departs a force equivalent to gravity on earth or a significant fraction thereof. Temperature kept at something comfortable to work at .. e.g. 20°C or 70° Fahrenheit. Air pressure at something equivalent to Earth surface air density.

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  • $\begingroup$ this question is underdefined; a station spinning sufficiently quickly could keep air in an open "pool" of some depth. I think the relevant parameters are depth, temperature, acceleration, and composition. I can't think offhand or any combination of parameters that would make this scheme more sensible for satellite repair than putting the technician in a spacesuit, though. $\endgroup$
    – Erin Anne
    Commented Jul 3 at 23:10
  • $\begingroup$ Gravity approx equiv to earth. Working in suits is a terrible pain in the backside in practice.. very slow and unwieldy. It's also likely to be safer? Apparently airlocks just vent the air so they lose air overtime. So it might save air? $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 3 at 23:47
  • $\begingroup$ As far as depth goes there's a number of proposals for different size stations ... O'Neill cylinder has a radius of 4km. Min radius is apparently 220m ?? quora.com/… $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 4 at 0:00
  • $\begingroup$ Airlocks don't vent all of their atmosphere, they typically depressurize to a few psi by pumping air back into the station, then vent the rest, but that's mainly to reduce the time that astronauts have to spend in the airlock. So yes there is some air loss each time they use the airlock which adds up over time, but that is with current airlocks. Presumably future airlocks will be able to minimize the loss. Especially if it's just a satellite in there when they can take their time and pump out most of the air. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 4 at 13:45
  • $\begingroup$ Yep. Apparently the Space Shuttle air lock vented gas (I hear)? The Space Station air lock does not. What the Shuttle did is kind of irrelevant in this case however. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 5 at 5:33

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On Earth, you have to go up 100 km or so to get to a reasonable approximation of vacuum. On a rotating space station the centrifugal "gravity" declines as you move away from the rim. It's zero at the hub. So, assuming earthlike conditions at the rim, you need the station to have a radius of 200 km or so to get vacuum at the hub. Pretty big station.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yep that answers the question. It has to be too big for us to see anytime soon (or probably ever). Thanks. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 4 at 0:06
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The answers above are correct, but it might be helpful to see where the factor of $2$ mentioned by @John Doty comes from, and get a sense of scale to get lower pressures (even if not above-Karman-line levels of vacuum).

The altitude $h$ necessary for air pressure to drop by a factor of $e^{-1}$ is approximately given by $PE(h) = \tfrac{1}{2} k_B T$. This comes from comparing the thermal energy with the energy cost to climb a certain height. As the gravitational acceleration close to the Earth's surface is pretty much constant we get $PE = m g h$, solving for $h$ we get $$ h_{\tfrac{1}{2}} = \frac{\ln(2) k_B T}{2 m g} \approx 6 \text{ km} $$ as the height needed to half the atmospheric density (pretty close to the real value of $5.5$km I just looked up!). If you want to have only ~$1$% of the pressure, you need to climb almost 7 times this height.

But, the artificial gravity from a spinning station is not constant. The acceleration goes as: $a_r = a_R \tfrac{r}{R}$ where $R$ is the radius of the whole spinning system and $r$ is your current distance from the hub. To get the potential energy we need to integrate this $$ \text{PE} = -m \int_R^r a_R \tfrac{r}{R} = \tfrac{1}{2} m a_R \left(R^2-r^2\right) $$ which evaluated at the hub ($r=0$) gives $\tfrac{1}{2} m a_R R$. Assuming that you want the artificial gravity (and the atmosphere) at the rim to be Earth normal ($a_R = g$) then we can solve to give $$ R_{\tfrac{1}{2}} = \frac{\ln(2) k_B T}{m g} = 2 h_{\tfrac{1}{2}}\approx 12 \text{ km} $$

so the values for the radius to get a given rarefication is double what it should be on Earth, as stated by @John Doty.

In other words a station with a radius of $12$km will still have half its atmosphere at the hub. To limit air loss you might want the air to be less than 1/1000 times as dense (still far from a vacuum) where it's open, which means your station needs to be at least $240$km in diameter.

Note that all this ignores the complicated thermodynamics of temperature changes and heat transfers and all of that, but it's enough as a back-of-the-envelope calculation to show why the idea is doomed.

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    $\begingroup$ Ahh. I was wondering about both the effect of the difference between constant gravity and the artificial gravity, and where the extra 2x came from. Thank you very much. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 5 at 5:40
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If a 400km diameter rotating space station is beyond your budget, you could consider using an airlock fluid denser than air to reduce the station diameter. Various (impractical) fluids are discussed in Could liquid airlocks work?

You would need to allow for the fact that centrifugal acceleration falls as you approach the axis, so the fluid column would need to be about twice height of the same fluid airlock design on Earth. But you would be dealing with a station measured in tens of meters, not hundreds of kilometers.

Water would be the most economical fluid, but its high vapor pressure would cause enthusiastic boiling on the surface exposed to vacuum. Covering the water surface with low vapor pressure fluid (silicon oil has been suggested) would just move the boiling to the water/oil interface.

The whole column could be filled with silicon oil but this would be a bit messy.

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  • $\begingroup$ I love that people have discussed this (even if it's impractical). Very interesting. Thank you. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 5 at 5:43
  • $\begingroup$ I wonder if a hybrid solution would work, like an airlock chamber that fills with a fluid to push out the air, then the external valve opens and the fluid drains out under gravity to leave the chamber evacuated without the need for air pumps and the associated oxygen losses. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 9 at 18:26
  • $\begingroup$ @DarthPseudonym good idea. I wonder what the energy costs are. Vacuum pumps seem to make alot of noise to do not much useful work. $\endgroup$
    – Woody
    Commented Jul 9 at 22:06

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