Why doesn't NASA use artificial gravity, especially on the ISS?

Question

Artificial gravity would greatly improve the time that astronauts could be in space, and return to Earth. They would only have to make modules spin at the speed that would create a force equal to the acceleration of gravity on Earth.

Answer 1

A spinning ISS would be extremely difficult to dock with, and almost impossible to expand in orbit without destabilizing the spin. It would also be quite difficult to boost to a higher orbit, which the ISS must do every few months to avoid falling back to earth.

Answer 2

For one thing we haven't invented it yet. The other reason is, one of the purposes of the ISS is to see how the human body reacts to being in space with no gravity. The way NASA sees it is eventually we will move off of this planet and we need to know how the human body reacts to things like that.
So far they have found that when humans are in space for long periods of time they lose bone mass a LOT faster. For example: after being in space for six months astronauts lose the same amount of bone mass as a sixty year old. That's why when astronauts that come home from a long mission have to go through lots of physical therapy and that's why they exercise for 2 to 3 hours daily.

Answer 3

I'll tell you why, because it's bloody expensive. The cost far outweighs the payout. Also they're in space doing experiments in low-G not in how to mimic earth's gravity.

This is probably another thing that will come in the next century from commercial spaceflight to make people comfortable with space.

Answer 4

The ISS is a bunch of square boxes conjured together. It's not like the classic wheel you see in sci-fi stuff. There's no way to rotate it to simulate gravity.

Answer 5

Primarily because it hasn't been invented yet.

And, spinning a "wheel" space station is rather hard to build; and likely pretty difficult to dock with.

Answer 6

Probably would use too much energy to spin it. Or cost too much to build it that way.