RE: What do your ships look like? (was: Minatures)

Niko Mikkanen writes:
>> Ever tried shooting out to the side form a rotating ship? Gunners
might 
>> start getting a bit giddy after a few minutes...
>> Also, the further away from the hull you can take the rotating part,
the 
>> slower it will have to rotate. Using this sort of artificial gravity 
>> during a battle, however, is stupid. 

FWIW a rotating section could make pin-point targeting difficult for
enemy
gunners.

David Brewer wrote:
>My physics being awfully rusty... wouldn't a rotating (fully- or
>partially-) ship be this great big gyroscope? Wouldn't that make
>it behave in really strange ways? 

A rotating section generates a force about the axis it spins on called a
torque. If this section has sufficient mass, it can act like you said,
as a
gyroscope.  That is, the torque could affect the ship's facing by
requiring
a force larger than the torque to change direction.  I would think ship
designs using a rotating section would be built with sufficient
thrusters to
overcome the force produced by the rotating section for maneuvering.

Mike Miserendino