ONE REVOLUTION PER MINUTE - a short film by Erik Wernquist

ONE REVOLUTION PER MINUTE is a short film I made to explore my fascination with artificial gravity in space. It takes place aboard the “SSPO Esperanta“ - a planetary orbiter that spins around itself at a rate of one revolution per minute (1 RPM). With a radius of 450 meters, the spin generates artificial gravity with an effect of approximately 0.5 g along its main deck. With the “Esperanta“ I wanted to create a leisure-like environment, such as a hotel or cruise ship, and explore what the views could be like onboard when the orbiter visits some of the worlds in our solar system. I was also particularly interested in how light and shadows from the sun play around in the interior as it spins around. For those reasons, I decided to keep all artificial lights off - with the exception of some emergency lights to avoid complete darkness - and to only let natural light illuminate the interiors. As this made the place appear quite desolate, I found it interesting to imagine