The Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies

What people said

BubbleRings · 2024-01 · Strong recommendation

Not me. I only understand half your post, to tell you the truth. But Derek Muller on the youtube channel Veritasium has a good video on this, where he mentions how, when asked one time, Feynman couldn't think of a simple way to describe how it works, and then Muller goes on to explain it in a way that I could see. Great stuff: [VIDEO]

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hinkley · 2025-07 · Reference

More seriously though, rotating habs are more difficult to spin properly than Clarke knew. The Russians discovered this and kept it to themselves. [VIDEO] I personally like the idea of spinning up large asteroids but the Dzhanibekov Effect will cause a lot of sloshing. If I understand it right, you have to spin them along the long axis, not like O’Neill cylinders. Two separate habitats at opposite ends of an air shaft. Clarke rings have to be careful about docking platforms. In fact they might need an inertially separate structure floating near them to handle loading and unloading of cargo, and then ferry materials back and forth across the “air gap” using very small vessels or robotic arms.

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HarHarVeryFunny · 2024-06 · Reference

I was just about to suggest the same thing. Here's a related Veritasium episode: "The Bizarre Behavior of Rotating Bodies" [VIDEO]

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