Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Besides, we can just forget the cable: Simply shoot the projectile and
> that's it. With the correct amount of speed it will stop the object from
> rotating. Where did the angular momentum go?

  I thought about this and became to a conclusion. You could have explained
it if you knew it instead of just saying "you are wrong" without any
explanation.

  The answer is that the object-projectile system still has the angular
momentum. If we calculate the angular momentum of this system after the
firing, ie. the how the system is oriented with regard to the center of
mass of the system and the distance between the two objects, we will
probably get an angular momentum equivalent to the original one.

  The same is probably true for two approaching objects which collide.
Even though each object by itself didn't have any angular momentum, the
two-object system did. The entire two-object system is actually rotating
around the center of mass of the two objects (even though they two objects
are travelling almost rectilinearly; this is because they are not travelling
along the same line in space). When they collide and stick to each other,
the "speed of rotation" they had just before they collided will be kept. The
angular momentum will be unmodified. Only if the two objects were travelling
exactly on the same line in space will there be no rotation because there's
no angular momentum.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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