DareDemon666

Thanks for the answer! In the case of jettisoned stages it might be the motor's mass throwing things off, but then I'd expect it to fly with the engine forwards. I also mostly see things like boosters falling 'away' from the craft with a slight spin - shortly becoming random spinning. It seems most likely that I've got an out of date version, I'll go take a look... Once again, cheers!

Hi, So I was playing KSP and I noticed that cylindrical objects - like jettisoned stages, fuel tanks, etc - seemed to fall with an attitude perpendicular to the flight path, Basically they fly/fall sideways. The weird bit is that this even happens with parts with nose cones so that it has the least drag with the nose into the wind as it were. I mean here even the centre of mass is shifted slightly forwards. It got me thinking, though I understand a fair amount of physics I can't figure out why it doesn't fly aerodynamically? -And once sideways it's incredibly hard to orient any other way (as you'd expect). So am I being an idiot here and missing something I really should've learnt by A-level physics, or is there some underlying phenomenon at work here? Cheers, Jack