Quote:
Originally Posted by RogerBW
The cylinder design (for purists, the double counterrotating cylinders, which allow you to maintain attitude control without using reaction mass)...
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Unfortunately, not so. Each cylinder individually acts as a gyroscope and if you try to keep both pointed at the sun, one will twist up, the other down (but with no net change in angular momentum). To get them to work as O'Neill described, you would need a massive and strong structure linking them, not the flimsy cables depicted by O'Neill. His design is badly understrength.