Recent content by RazorTM

One more quick question: You're saying that the 1800 kg*m^2/s angular momentum from the ship (and 3600 from the cargo) seems to "disappear" because the ship is no longer accelerating towards the COM of the system, right? Just trying to make sure I completely understand the situation.

Wow, thank you all for your help! I think the most critical thing that was confusing me is this: I will see what I can do about improving on my space simulator and show my results here later.

Oops, just a few typos that I made--sorry! Where does the w^2 come from? m_S * w_s * r_S * r_S only has a single w_s in it, not two, and L_S = I_S * w_S, not I_S * w_S^2, right? I think you're trying to say 1500 * w + 1800 * w, which is exactly what I had, just not in quite the same...

Thanks. The one thing that perplexes me is that the total momentum for all the pieces after separating doesn't equal the total momentum from the system before separation. I'm still rather confused on this whole concept.

But once the ship releases the cargo, they become 2 separate systems, right? Here's a situation I created as an example. Does my reasoning make sense? The ship and cargo are rotating forward at 2rad/s and moving forward with a velocity of 5m/s. Their centers of mass are 3m apart as shown...

Well, after a great deal of searching, I finally found a web page which I think properly explains the answer to my second question: http://www.engin.brown.edu/courses/en4/notes/RigidDynamics/dynmod.htm#rb523 -- Scroll down to figure 5.2.11 (From...

So the linear momentum of the released object would be equal to both the amount of rotational momentum and the amount of linear momentum lost by the group that released the object--that makes sense. One more question: would the change in the location of the center of mass affect the rotational...

Well, this is my first post--hopefully I'm posting in the correct forum... I'm developing a space simulator computer application in which a rigid body's motion is calculated using its linear momentum and rotational momentum. I'm simulating multiple bodies attached together (for example, a...