Recent content by JoeStrout

Well, that's what I'm doing now, but as described in the first post, it results in unrealistic behavior. Each cylinder's energy is reduced by flipping over onto its side and rotating end-over-end (while conserving angular momentum). So, the sum of their energy is also reduced. Yes, I've come...

That's true for an ideal rigid body, and we simulated that long ago here. However it is not a relevant effect in this case (at least, not in any way I can see). I really do want to simulate these effects, yes. But my question isn't about the stability of a single rotating mass. We have that...

I've written a space colony simulation game called High Frontier. It correctly simulates rotational stability when most of the mass is dominated by a single large spinning part. For example, a squat cylinder will be stable, but a long cylinder will end up tumbling end over end, as shown...