Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
As a working concept, I have it exerting its full gravity from the base of the plate to a previously engineered height, at which location it rapidly tapers off.
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This result falls out naturally from the geometry, although that height depends on the diameter of the disk.
The inverse-square law holds when you consider a test mass at a distance from an object that you can treat as a point, as the field lines diverge spherically.
When your test mass is near a field-emitting plane, there is no field strength drop off w.r.t. distance as the field lines are all parallel, until you move far enough away from the plate for it to "look" like a point source.
Simple engineering tricks could be making the plate concave or convex (not sure which would get the desired result...) Otherwise, you can just handwave the attenuation distance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes
As long as you're exactly equidistant between the disks? If you're slightly closer to one than the other, presumably you accelerate toward the close one. The zero-G spot isn't stable -- unless the force doesn't depend on distance from the disk. (Is that the case?)
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Where the field lines are parallel between the disks, opposing forces would cancel out equally at all points between them. But you're right in them having to be perfectly aligned.