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ONeill Cylinder Simulator Projectile Motion in Spinning Space Stations

ONeill Cylinder Simulator Projectile Motion in Spinning Space Stations

Last week a student was talking with me about what life would be like on a spinning space station. In the absence of a gravitational field, we can simulate a gravitational force with the centripetal force from the rotation of the space station. Famous examples of this principle include ONeill Cylinders and the ring-world in Halo

Artists Rendering of the Inside of an ONeill Cylinder Space Colony from NASA

The Halo Ring-World

In our discussion we came across the thought of what it might look like to throw a ball in the air in a zero-gravity rotating space station. I was stumped so I brought the question to my colleagues. They were stumped. Eventually I was able to make a pair of parametric equations for position in time to model the motion of the ball but it didnt tell me much unless I could visualize the graph of the equations. The next logical step was to simulate the equations in software. Enter the ONeill Cylinder Simulator:

Passing a Ball to Yourself in an ONeill Cylinder

When I saw the parametric equation animated (like above) it blew my mind a little. Here we see someone throwing a ball up and to the left, it circles above their head, and returns to them from the right. Throwing a ball in an ONeill Cylinder apparently is nothing like on Earth. You can do some really sweet patterns:

A ball thrown through the center of the ring with a low velocity compared to the tangential velocity of the ring will spiral!

Basically projectile motion is nothing like that on Earth. When Master Chief throws a grenade on Halo he might be in danger of it looping over his head and landing at his feet!

If youre curious, these are the parametric equations used to plot the position of the ball in both frames of reference




If you want the source code, you can grab it here. Apologies in advance for the poor quality of code.

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