• Question: If we build a huge space station like Death Star, will it have gravity and stick people on it eventually?

    Asked by ZombieBomb to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 21 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Connor Macrae

      Connor Macrae answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      If we made it big enough then yes! All matter has gravity, you just need enough of it to feel the attraction. So if you made a death star the same mass as the moon, then if you walked around the outside it would be the same as walking on the moon. However you would not be able to walk around in corridors inside as gravity will be directed towards the centre – and you would not be able to have you space station hollow at all!

      Instead, you could build a ring shaped station, then make it spin fast enough to recreate the feeling of gravity with centrifugal force – Lot’s of sci-fi films show this!

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 21 Jun 2015:

      The death star is actually a remarkably poorly engineered space station 😐 Connor’s right that if you make it dense enough, with enough mass, you should be able to emulate gravity, but it would have to be much denser than the Death Star is full of corridors (and unexplained bottomless pits), which makes it more like a round ball of sponge, which wouldn’t have the same gravitational pull as a solid object of the same size!

    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Any object has gravity – your body has a gravitational pull too, but things like the planet are bigger and have a much stronger gravitational pull. As Connor says, to build a space station with artificial gravity it would have to be shaped like a ring and spinning around!

      (I hope you’re not planning on building a Death Star when you grow up!)

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