Re: Dealing with two "down" directions might be tough
"That's why the outer wall is curved like a wineglass. There's only one down."
My first thought was exactly how to deal with the 'real' down vs the 'artificial' down. But curving the outer wall won't completely solve the issue either. The closer you are to the center, the less centrifugal component you have and also the 'flatter' the floor will be (ie closer to horizontal on the real surface and so higher component of the moon/planet's gravity).
In real terms that means that there is a narrow band of usable space where gravity is around 1G plus or minus a bit. You can't get further away from the center of rotation than the 'sweet spot' since at that point the tower wall/floor will be almost vertical with respect to the planet surface. Closer to the center of rotation, artificial gravity will be less, and the component of 'real' gravity will not be large enough to compensate (but I guess it might be possible to use these areas for storage, growing food or other activities were low-gravity is less of an issue).
The other major problem is permanence, ie if the tower stops rotating everything / everyone that is not bolted down will fall. That makes stopping it for scheduled maintenance* a giant pain, and makes unscheduled stoppages a huge disaster.
*and I hate to think what lunar / martian regolith would be doing to a spinning mechanism. On Earth you could use some overpressure mechanism to keep dust from blowing in, but in a place where atmosphere is a precious resource that isn't a good solution
Biting the hand that feeds IT
