Uneven Landings...

Imagine simulaing a 3D Lunar Lander that has four landing "pads" touching
down...

One of these pads is going to make contact with the ground first, and the
ship is going to rotate slightly. I'm pretty sure that the force and
direction of these rotation is dependant upon how far the contact point is
from the center of the landers gravity, but I don't really know this for
sure...

Can anyone with a better understanding of physics help here?

Tony

Some time on Wed, 25 Jun 2003 22:25:57 GMT, "Tony Di Croce"
<iaretony@hotmail.com> posted that:

>Imagine simulaing a 3D Lunar Lander that has four landing "pads" touching
>down...
>
>One of these pads is going to make contact with the ground first, and the
>ship is going to rotate slightly. I'm pretty sure that the force and
>direction of these rotation is dependant upon how far the contact point is
>from the center of the landers gravity, but I don't really know this for
>sure...
>
>Can anyone with a better understanding of physics help here?
>
Depending upon how complex you want to get I think that you're on the
right path. The potential energy of the mass of the lander, under
whatever gravity exists, gives you the basic accelerating force to use
in the rotation with the lander 'pad' as the pivot point and the centre
of mass as the 'arm' of the rotation.

If you want to get more complex you also need to take into account any
thrust applied by the lander, which may not be perpendicular to the
ground (and the ground itself may not be flat).

You can also get more complex and apply friction rules to see if the
lander 'pads' slide on contact with the ground.

You could start by drawing out the lines of force and calculating the
resultant vectors to be used in either rotation or translation and see
if that gives you the basic effect that you want to achieve.

--
Alfie
<http://www.delphia.co.uk/>
No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.