Added 1 new A* page:I saw a mention in a blog-ish article by Gary Church, Water and Bombs, that the Gemini 11 mission tested artificial gravity--so of course I had to go and look that up!
In 1966, Gemini 11 launched into Earth orbit and rendezvoused with the unmanned Agena Target Vehicle, simulating the rendezvous of a lunar module with a command module after a successful Moon landing. Then, using the Agena's thruster, the combined craft boosted to a high orbit of 850 miles (1,370 km), which is *still* the record for the highest Earth orbit--the maximum orbital altitude of the Space Shuttle, by comparison, was 600 miles (970 km).
Anyway to get to the point, at some point in their practice routine that covered four docking and undocking maneuvers, the astronauts tied a 100-foot (30 m) tether to the Agena
image by NASA (source)
and then used the maneuvering thrusters on the two craft to spin them around each other, with their inertia (the so-called "centrifugal force") pulling the tether tight between them and causing the astronauts to feel an effect like gravity pulling them into the outward-facing hull of the Gemini capsule. Artificial gravity in spaaaaaaaace!
But with their short tether and relatively slow rotational velocity, they only generated the equivalent of 0.00015 g; under gravity of that magnitude, the average human adult would weigh something like 12 grams--about the weight of a lightweight writing pen at sea level, according to the internet.
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