Human Centrifuges; The Old and the New

摘要

The human centrifuge has been around for many years. Some of the earliest known uses were for medical treatment. More recently, since aviation was born in 1903, the centrifuge has been used to emulate aircraft and reproduce sustained accelerations greater than 1 G on the ground. The advantage a human centrifuge provides over an aircraft that can pulll G is that it is 1) ground-based; thus safe, and 2) capable of providing exact G profiles. In this paper I will look at the history of the human centrifuge, with emphasis on the latest additions to the inventories of France, Sweden, and the UK> These new devices represent a "Fourth Generation" of centrifuges. I will also discuss the issue of G onset rate of these devices and the 15 G/sec onset rate being ordered for modern, flyable, human centrifuges.