Yaw would be motion about the z axis or "normal axis" i.e. the axis of rotation would be through your head to your feet. I see no way to impart a spin with a single gimbaled motor about this axis, unless it uses a vane to react with the thrust.
How exactly do these platfroms "fly" ? Can a single rocket engine gimbal to provide thrust about the lateral and longitudinal axis, yaw and still remain stable while asceding/decending?
My understanding is that orbital rockets are inherently unstable (provides them the ability to steer, without the negative effects of things like wings and big fins). From here on out, I am making this up, but might be right- seems like there would be a minimum of 3 vectors acting on a rocket.
+ Gravity Vector acting on the center of mass
+ Thrust vector acting at the rear/bottom of the craft
+ Aerodynamic vector acting at the center of pressure
As the rocket is taking off and landing, there is no aerodynamic affect, so it is purely the Gravity and Thrust vector acting on the device which has a similar stability problem to a segway but without any DoF constrained. Which is a nice way of saying that it can only achieve stability through a sophisticated control system
As it gets flying, and is flying straight it is possible that the center of thrust is not far behind the center of pressure (and the effect of gravity gets small) making the rocket sorta stable and the fins can compensate if the rocket decides to tumble. The trick with this rocket is that there are no fins, and the cross-section is very fat making it unstable at any speed.
One thing to note is that many rockets use gimbal rocket motors, just not to such cool effect
Your bang on right Hopslink, lets hope they try harder and have another go, still rules are rules, they also broke the height restriction by going to 2000' I know a girl with nice gimbals Mark.
Comments
+ Gravity Vector acting on the center of mass
+ Thrust vector acting at the rear/bottom of the craft
+ Aerodynamic vector acting at the center of pressure
As the rocket is taking off and landing, there is no aerodynamic affect, so it is purely the Gravity and Thrust vector acting on the device which has a similar stability problem to a segway but without any DoF constrained. Which is a nice way of saying that it can only achieve stability through a sophisticated control system
As it gets flying, and is flying straight it is possible that the center of thrust is not far behind the center of pressure (and the effect of gravity gets small) making the rocket sorta stable and the fins can compensate if the rocket decides to tumble. The trick with this rocket is that there are no fins, and the cross-section is very fat making it unstable at any speed.
One thing to note is that many rockets use gimbal rocket motors, just not to such cool effect
...a second go round could have won them T3 round 7.