Boron Shark
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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Manchester, UK
Posts: 91 |
Remember the phrase, "Thrusters at station keeping" In other words, Babylon 5 will have small thrusters on the stationary central core that push the core in the same direction as rotation. Otherwise, not only would the outer sectors rotate, torque would cause the inner core to counter rotate. Hence Babylon 4's counter rotating sections cancel each other out, removing the need for station keeping thrusters and improving stability. To put it another way, why does a helicopter have a tail rotor? If it didn't the fuselage would spin in the opposite direction of the rotor. Which brings another point, for B4's counter rotating design to work perfectly, both sections would have to have equal momentum, otherwise the centripetal forces would not balance and station keeping thrusters would still be necessary. What you would probably find is the broad aft section rotates relatively slowly, with the narrow midsection spinning quicker to compensate.
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06-09-2003 12:01 PM
