About stabilizing a space rocket with a pendullum

  • Thread starter Thread starter simplex
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Rocket Space
Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
Sign up Log in
1 reply · 3K views
simplex
Messages
40
Reaction score
0
About stabilizing a space rocket using a pendullum

There exists a competition called Google Lunar X Prize whose main objective is sending a rocket to the Moon. One of the contenders, team ARCA, is ready to launch a rocket (not a Moon rocket) about which they claim to be passively stabilized in vacuum by the swinging movement of some pendulums (the lower stages of the rocket).

A self explicative nice animation regarding the rocket of ARCA and its stabilization method can be downloaded from the following address:
VIDEO:
http://www.arcaspace.ro/

QUESTION: Do you believe that the stabilization procedure in the animation could work in vacuum, at least theoretically?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org