[brianmcconnell]

I agree that artificial gravity, plus radiation protection, are must haves for long duration deep space flights.

With inflatable structures, artificial G is possible to do with much less mass than you think. Using Bigelow Aerospace's BA330 as a proxy (60kg/cubic meter of habitable space), you would need between 5,000 to 20,000kg to build a 100m long passageway between 1 to 2m across on the interior. Inflatable structures are made from materials that handle tensile loads well (the hoop stress from pressurization in particular).

As an added bonus, the inflatable passageway, besides functioning as a tether, creates usable habitable space, so if one is clever, it is not strictly speaking deadweight mass.

Alex Tolley and I looked at this in detail while working on papers related to our "spacecoach" design pattern, you can find a good intro at https://medium.com/@brianmsf/traveling-to-mars-just-add-wate...

[LeifCarrotson]

> Inflatable structures are made from materials that handle tensile loads well (the hoop stress from pressurization in particular).

And conveniently, hoop stress due to pressure in a cylinder is twice the axial stress due to pressure, so you're free to add quite a bit of axial stress due to the mass of all the items in your artificial gravity environment!