eli5: why can’t we create artificial gravity on space crafts by accelerating at 9.8 m/s
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There isn’t enough fuel to sustain that level of acceleration.
We currently have two kinds of engines.
The kind that burn hard but not for long.
And the kind that can burn for weeks, but not hard at all.
To get the change in velocity to go to the moon, the Apollo 17 mission only burned for 346 seconds using it’s liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen engines.
Meanwhile the Dawn Probe’s ion engines would take 4 days to go from zero to 60 mph, but was burning for weeks.
That being said, if we somehow made an engine that could accelerate for 1 g for days on end, we could do it.
But for now it’s science fiction.
Read/watch “The Expanse” for an excellent example of this.
That series acknowledges that the engine that does it simply shouldn’t have worked.
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