Is it really just an engineering problem? | The Real Physics of Artifici...

It i not an engineering problem as much as a cost analysis problem - as is whether to go to Mars. Designing and testing an orbital station that allows us to calibrate the tradeoffs between radius, spin and the coriolis effect is probably cheaper than a massive ESA building doing incremental research. Doing a practical mock-up makes space tourism possible - so that the tourists can occupy the low G rings while staff live in higher G - so that they can stay longer and not be expensively re-boosted on a periodic basis. Also, actually going to the Martian surface is not optimal. Instead, an orbital station around Mars designed with families and social structures - kind of an orbiting JPL - is much more effective for doing science with less wait time between experiments. There can be some up-and down to retrieve samples - but alcohol fuel and oxygen can be produced for this given a large enough station.

Constant boost is no so hard if you do a broken washing machine drive. Rotate masses but don't let them get to perpendicular to the direction of rotation. With enough rotating mass (with at least two modules with counter-rotation to provide stability), the only issue is whether your fusion micro-reactor produces enough energy to move both crew and reactor at .38G - or whatever G the spinning experiment say is necessary. Sometimes, engineering requires testing a prototype rather than a model.