They say "Every part of this mission scenario has been demonstrated one way or the other" but I'm struggling to think of a proper artificial gravity demonstration. Are there any?
Gemini 11 had some success with a similar scheme involving tethering themselves to their Aegena craft and spinning up. However this was far from straightforward and only created tiny amounts (Wikipedia says 0.00015g) of artificial acceleration.
In order to get 1g from a 50m tether it would have to spin at a little over 4rpm, which seems like quite a lot for such a big thing. Also the difference in acceleration between an astronaut's head and feet would be something like 0.3 m/s/s, which hasn't (AFAIK) been tested.
The Gemini experiment was amazing (especially given it was some way down the list of mission objectives) but I don't think it qualifies as a full demonstration of the technique. I know this project is not intended to be a finished design, but they give the impression that artificial gravity generation is a solved problem.
The moon does rotate, but the orbit is synchronised such that one rotation occurs per orbit, so from the Earth it appears not to rotate. However, if you photograph the moon over time you find you can see >50% of the surface area (about 60% I think) due to libration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration
Gemini 11 had some success with a similar scheme involving tethering themselves to their Aegena craft and spinning up. However this was far from straightforward and only created tiny amounts (Wikipedia says 0.00015g) of artificial acceleration.
In order to get 1g from a 50m tether it would have to spin at a little over 4rpm, which seems like quite a lot for such a big thing. Also the difference in acceleration between an astronaut's head and feet would be something like 0.3 m/s/s, which hasn't (AFAIK) been tested.
The Gemini experiment was amazing (especially given it was some way down the list of mission objectives) but I don't think it qualifies as a full demonstration of the technique. I know this project is not intended to be a finished design, but they give the impression that artificial gravity generation is a solved problem.