The tree · Biology · Happens to the world · Could be decided within 1 to 5 years
A crew lives for a month in a spinning spacecraft that produces artificial gravity
Artificial gravity by spinning has been proposed since the 1950s and never flown with people. A month-long crewed demonstration at any useful gravity level settles the practical questions (motion sickness, docking, structural behaviour) that keep it a paper idea, and is the first step on the habitat route that sidesteps the partial-gravity question entirely.
The test: what counts as it having happened
A crewed spacecraft or station module rotates to produce at least one-sixth of Earth's gravity at the crew's living level for thirty continuous days, with the crew living in the rotating section throughout, at a reported rotation rate of 6 revolutions per minute or less, with the crew's health over the month reported by the operator, and the rotation confirmed by the operator and independent tracking.
Settled by: The operator's mission record, including its crew-health report, and independent orbital tracking
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 70% | 75% | 80% | 90% | 92% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 8th, 2026.
Why these numbers: Proposed since the 1950s, never flown, but private station builders now plan it and the engineering is modest; the risk is that nobody funds a month-long test when partial gravity on the Moon is available instead.
What this one is worth
If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.6% (+0.1 points). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.5% (too small to tell apart from chance).
| Longevity scenario | baseline2071 ± 8 | moderate2080 | strong2095 | radical2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The headline as it stands | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled yes now | 0.6% | 1.4% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled no now | 0.5% | 1.1% | 3.4% | 9.8% | 14% |
This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the
ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a
reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run
2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and
playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per
scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about
0.10 points is inside the noise rather than
a finding.
What the ledger says about this step
- Forty-one steps had their criteria tightened so that two readers would agree when each has happened, with no number moved for that alone 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed
The last 3 checks
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-11-01 Nothing new
No crewed rotating spacecraft or 30-day spin test found in the past week. Vast's roadmap lists a sub-scale demo spin test and an artificial gravity station for the 2030s, which are plans and not the event.
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2026-10-25 Nothing new
No crewed spinning spacecraft has produced artificial gravity for thirty days and no new announcement appeared in the week. Haven-1 is reported as no earlier than the first quarter of 2027 and Vast's rotating station is a 2030s goal.
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2026-10-18 Nothing new
No crewed spinning spacecraft has produced artificial gravity for thirty days, and no new announcement appeared in the week. Vast's rotating station remains a goal for the 2030s and reports conflict on whether Haven-1 will spin at all.
Revisions
| Date | Field | From | To | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-19 | resolution | people aboard, any rotation rate, no health report | the crew living in the rotating section throughout, at a reported rotation rate of 6 revolutions per minute or less, with crew health reported by the operator | Step 27 outside-model review, items 6 and 41 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): the demonstration has to prove people can live there, not only that the structure spins, and a station with a spinning module the crew visits would otherwise have counted; 6 rpm is the upper end of what the adaptation literature treats as tolerable. Decided September 19th, 2026. |
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The record itself is data/B-biology.toml in the public repository.