Sorry, it was late and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was thinking of Kubrik’s spaceships in the movie. Would a donut shaped rotating spacestation provide a simulated gravity that an average human would find comfortable? In Kubrik’s film, the spacestation seemed to be used by civilian travellers, much as a modern airport is used. Would the Coriolis effect be noticable regardless of the size of the station? This thread began by discussing the somewhat small size of Discovery’s rotating cabin. Could a spacecraft be designed that was large enough that suitable artificial gravity would be created and that the Coriolis effect would be manageable?
May I hijack this thread to explain my ignorance on the subject?
If so, then I shall continue. When we see an orbiting station, like the midway station in 2001, which way does the axis of rotation point. I mean, if the idea is to stop the person walking on the floor floating off around the station, does the axis need to point towards the centre of the Earth? Or does it need to point (and apologies for the terrible description) at a tangent to the orbit of the station.
What I’m wondering is whether the floor moving “up” in front of you has to stop you from falling towards the planet’s surface or from moving too quickly forward in an orbit around the planet, in order to simulate gravity.
Is this making sense, I just realised that I hadn’t fully understood the theory behind it all.
And related to this, which way would the axis of rotation point in the Discovery? Would it be at right angles to the path of travel, so that the floor rose “up” towards the astronauts as they moved forward with the ship? Would this mean that a change in velocity would require the ship to completely come to a halt first and then change path so that the astronauts could halt with it and realign themselves to the floor? Why aren’t the astronauts simply flung off to one side of the ship?
I’d appreciate someone to help out with my misunderstanding of this, I never thought about it until now. If I’ve not explained it properly, please tell me 
An object in orbit can be treated (locally) exactly as if it were off in deep space, with no other masses anywhere near it. The Earth’s gravity is irrelevant, to the folks in the space station. So the axis could point any which way you wanted.
If you’re in a vehicle and change your direction of travel, there would be some gyroscopic effects, but most of a spaceship’s travel is going to be in unpowered orbits (which don’t count as changing direction, for these purposes). It probably would be a good idea to strap in whenever you’re firing the engines, but that’s not going to be very often, and the engines will likely be a lot less than 1 g.
And the larger you make your rotating section, the more uniform you can make the gravity inside it. I don’t know what levels of variation or Coriolis force would be comfortable for an average person, but whatever those levels are, if you make your spacecraft large enough, you can accomodate them. The question then just becomes whether such large sizes are practical, but even if I knew enough to calculate the sizes, “practical” is a rather squishy question.
So if I was onboard Kubrick’s Discovery and stepped in from one of those side corridors, what would happen? I would step out (I forget where the doors led off to the rest of the ship) and put my foot on the floor/wall. Friction between my foot and the floor would mean I accelerate in a direction tangential to the path of the floor/wall, and as I tried to move in this straight line, the floor/wall keeps correcting me and I move in a circular path.
What would happen if I jumped towards the centre of rotation (i.e. “up”)? Or if I ran faster and faster? I’m thinking that if I jumped, I would “fall” back to the floor, landing behind where I jumped relative to the motion of the floor. My jumping would give me acceleration in a different direction to that of the tangent to the circle, but as I’m still trying to move in the direction of this tangent, I would still move back towards the floor. Is this correct? It has me awake at work for the first time this morning at least!
So by the time your manouevering has affected “gravity”, its already affected your passengers’ lunch and possibly squished them against a bulkhead 
I believe there is a scene in the movie where you can see the astronauts transitioning from the fixed part of Discovery to the rotating environment (then they climb down the ladder IIRC). A measurment from the film could establish the rotational velocity. And who is to say that they are spinning the wheel to get a full 1g? Maybe they are happy with a half a G. And when the astronaut is running around it, perhaps he is running in the direction of rotation and that would add to his apparent weight. My gut says that the Discovery wheel, as depicted, would make you very motion sick, the station maybe not so much. There is some perfesser somewhere that uses the movie as a teaching tool and calculates what the gravity would be in the station, etc.
Further, I believe one of the reasons O’neill colonies are a mile across or so is so that people wouldn’t notice the rotation so much. Remember, it isn’t just the coriolis force, but the rotation itself that messes with your inner ear/vision/balance harmony.
Actually, we have more than a dozen.