In case anyone remembers the now-antiquated yet visionary movie (and book) "2001: A Space Odyssey", one of the features of the long-duration spaceship was a rotating center section that created pseudo-gravity, allowing the astronauts to maintain some semblance of muscle tone. Also, the big space stations in the movie rotated for the same reason. Even the Russian spaceship in 2010 had a rotating section.
Well, having gravity of some sort appears to be a necessary design requirement for long duration space vehicles, according to this new design released by NASA, called Nautilus-X, which stands for Non-Atmospheric Universal Transport Intended for Lengthy US space eXploration.
Arthur C. Clarke would have loved it.
Nautilus-X update on GoogleDocs (Powerpoint)
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