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Showing results for tags 'free-fall'.
Found 2 results
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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
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Would two spacecraft that are orbiting "fall" vertically at the same rate? When i say fall, I don't mean relative to the ground, but just in the sense that orbiting objects fall while orbiting, but go fast enough sideways to keep from hitting the ground. I tried an experiment in KSP, by getting 2 spacecraft in slightly different orbits close to each other, then slowing one down to have a steep re-entry. I watched as the one re-entering fell vertically slightly faster than the one in orbit. But I thought they would have the same force of gravity acting on them?
