How a gyroscope guides a rocket

In this video we examine the peculiar properties of a toy gyroscope and show how they were harnessed to stabilise and guide the WWII German V2 rocket and the USA's giant Saturn V that took humans to the Moon.

00:00 Introduction
00:17 firework rocket launch
00:45 Active principle
01:14 The hovering V2 rocket
02:07 Brains of the rocket?
02:20 V2 Gyroscope guidance
03:14 Carbon jet vanes
03:31 Looking at V2 Gyros
04:56 Toy Gyroscope
07:52 Build a rocket gyro
08:58 The demonstration
09:51 Gimbal-lock
10:17 Measurement
11:45 Go electric
12:24 Gyro relics
12:38 Gyro air rotor
13:07 Artificial horizon rotor
13:18 Balancing of rotor
13:39 PIGA gyro rotor
13:50 S-75 Dvina gyro
14:29 Summary
14:40 More like this?

Presented by Robert J Dalby.

Produced by DB Video Services for Astronomy and Nature TV

[woozygrizzly]

Explained in less than 20 minutes what some courses do in a week. Bravo!

[FredoCorleone]

That footage of the rocket stuck in mid air is wonderful!

[bantalee]

I liked this instructional video.
My Father while in the Army designed and tested missiles at White Sands base. My sister has all of his written I like watching him putz with a small bicycle tire having welded rods on the center of the spoke array so he can hold onto it when he got the electric grinder/tool sharpener going at around 3400 rpm and placed the tire to it and got the tire spinning so fast he could hardly handle the dynamics of the spinning wheel in his hands. I watched him make his observations as he tried/forced to tilt the wheel in any direction. he was my teacher and inspiration for inventing.  For a winter project we built a gyro copter, aluminum frame and a wooden 3 ply rotor/no motor required. springtime came along and he took it out of the barn and with a strong nylon rope attached it to the copter and the other end tied it to a stake in the ground. being 8 years old at the time, I sat in the chair of the copter..the wind started to pick up and the rotor(not knowing of the rotor brake)began to rotate faster and faster. I did not want to jump off it fearing the blade would kill me..so I went airborne and the first to fly it(sort of). I screamed for dad and he ran out of the house. being about 15 ft in the air he could only give me instructions. I got hold of the steering column, he said push forward slowly ..I did and landed perfectly, he jumped on and knew how to brake the rotors speed. Man what a ride, .he smiled at me and said " I really wanted to be the first and only person to fly it, .but now you have that honor" he was not mad, .but all the more determined to test fly it for himself.  Obviously my weight was less and why i went airborne. A week later he and a few friends took it to a large prairie. they attached a long tow rope from copter to truck, dad put on a cheap helmet and harnessed himself in the seat and gave the order to go. the truck traveled about a quarter mile and dad released the guide rope..straight up he went, .then down, .then sideways, .then stabilized his flight. airborne for the better of twenty minutes flying around i could see a grin so big on his face looking though my boy scout binoculars.  he eyed a long empty stretch of country road and began his decent and made a perfect landing.  When it was all over his friends nicknamed him Gyro Jack. and ya know..he never flew anything else before and the only knowledge of flying the copter came from reading over and over the flying instructions and what to expect and how to counter any problems. he was a cool dad, I am proud of him . Sorry I just had to tell a story here. hope you had fun reading it. 

[oceanhome]

I used to work at a place that made gyros, part of the calibration procedure was to let them run for a week . This was called caging the gyro . You could watch several gyros spinning when I arrived at work the gyros would be flat perfectly . When I left work they all were about180 degrees pointing straight up . The gyros had NOT moved it was the earth that moved . Blew me away when I saw it happen .

[erikengheim]

Loved how you built a primitive model and attached simple paper pieces. It showed the principle very well. Too often people show the complicated model right away, making it hard to grasp the fundamentals.

[greywebb]

I was a Pershing Missile officer in the late 1960s. The Pershing guidance system was basically the same as you explained. Your video brought back a lot of memories. Thank you.

[lawrencetate]

I'm 59 and have exposed myself (sorry about that) to science all my life. I’ve seen most all the gyro videos on YouTube.

This is the first time I've seen a demonstration of the concept of active control using the broom, that I recall. Perhaps it was the way you succinctly made the the mechanics crystal clear. Absolutely nailed it.

[MrPlasticMaggot]

This video was extremely well done. Robert has a real flair for explaining and goes into just the right amount of detail to be interesting. It is not easy to communicate this clearly and keep the viewer engaged. Bravo.

[shaansingh]

i really appreciate people like you taking the time and effort to teach people like me in a simple understandable fashion.

[sMcRea]

Excelent! I was trying to explain to my 12 year old son how a gyro works and this video explains it perfectly! Thank you!

[ThomasGabrielsen]

At 10:23 I almost exclaimed: Watch out for gimbal lock, you're risk loosing your bearing.
This is the best demonstration of gyros I've ever seen.

[Icr]

This video is still giving in it helped me understand how these gyroscopes work in the Rockets. Especially that demonstration with the paper compass.

[ezbytes]

Wow, I just stumbled on this amazing video and learned the rocket science in 20 minutes. Knew all the physics of Gyroscope but to put it altogether in such a simple way is just amazing!!!

[ved]

Loved the demonstration. Thank you sir.

[andylauder]

Absolutely brilliant video which shows just how important the gyro is to space travel.

[sharaarati]

Very well explained. I always wondered how gyros worked but this demo clarifies the concept well.thanks.

[anthonyjm]

Worked in Marine navigation and used to rebuild spinning mass Gyrocompass's by full overhaul, cleaning, dynamic balancing the rotor and then reassembly with new parts, balancing the gyro itself then running it up and while it precessed and stabilized, checked it over 4 hrs of runup, adding weights as required ... then afterwards test runup and check of the Gyrosphere balances by using a swing table, interesting work .

[avinashjadhav]

So nicely explain nobody has ever such complicated subject before on u tube

[fenderOCG]

excellent explanation and demonstration, I had not seen a proper attempt to explain how exactly the gyroscope information was converted to fin movements before. I love this era of engineering and electronics because there are no computers or advanced electronics to break a chain of understanding from start to finish.

[copacetic]

Something I have wondered about for years thank you so much for this video.