Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Sci Fi Forum Orion, Mission to Alpha Centauri

Yep.


Yep.



Depends on your reference frame - without a gyroscope the ISS would keep its orientation relative to it own inertial frame, plus whatever changes in orientation were induced by the movement of people/supplies within the ISS itself.


Nope, as I pointed out in my post the gyroscopes use newtons laws to maintain the orientation of spacecraft, but cannot be used to change the momentum of the spacecraft.

They disprove your idea; they clearly show that internal forces - i.e. the gyroscopes - are completely unable to alter the momentum of the ship in which they are contained. You can use the gyroscope to reorientate the ship, but you cannot use it to move the center of mass - i.e. fly the ISS to the moon.

Heck, if all you needed a gyroscope once in orbit, why would they have built the Saturn booster rockets to get to the moon? A far simpler way would have been a much smaller rocket + a gyroscope.

The answer is simple - and its not because NASA is dumb. Its because gyroscopes and other internal forces are unable to alter the momentum of an object.



And? We never once said changes in orientation were not possible - only that changes in momentum - as in what you need for a rocket engine - cannot occur.

Notice in your video the ISS is turning; it is not rocketing off to the moon. Orbit is the same, momentum is the same, its just pointing another way.

The real irony is the turning of the ISS is achieved by the very law you are trying to violate - conservation of momentum. Changes in the spinning of the gyroscope create a change in the angular momentum of that gyroscope. Since momentum is conserved in a closed system, the ISS itself must turn to maintain the systems total angular momentum.


Win what, the prize for being the worst at grade 10 physics?


Re-writing our claims again, are we? Kellog and I have been clear since the first post that momentum cannot change. We've also been clear since the first day that shifts in the relative positions of components (i.e. the pipe verses your internal mass) can also occur.

In fact, if you had the vaguest idea of how momentum is determined, you'd realize that shifts in the positioning of the pipe verses the internal mass are necessary to maintain momentum when one object moves within another. If those shifts did not occur, the center of mass would move, and thus the momentum of the system would change.

But what cannot change is the momentum of the whole. A concept clearly demonstrated by your ISS video.



Actually, you've got that backwards. Relative to its inertial frame, the iss will not spin. It only appears to spin because it orbits the earth. Thus the iss has to be given spin (1 rotation/orbit) so that it always faces the same direction relative to the earth. The gyroscope is used to maintain that spin. The gyroscope is also used to maintain position when mass is moved around inside - other wise, someone walking from one end to the other could alter the iss's orientation in space.

However, no matter what you do with that gyroscope, the ISS stays in the same orbit. The movement of that internal mass, and thus the force created by that internal mass, is completely unable to produce thrust.

Which is the polar opposite of your claim.

Bryan