TABLE OF CONTENTS The dynamics of a continuous body, as presented in Chapter 2, Newtonian Mechanics, are specialized in this chapter for the case of rigid body dynamics. This means that all continuous bodies studied will have a constant shape. This is the common case for many applications. Systems such as satellites, aircraft, or robots are all typically modeled as sets of rigid bodies. The rotational dynamics of a rigid body are often referred to as Eulerian mechanics, because Euler's equation 
and Euler's rotational equation of motion generally govern this field.
Unlike Chapter 2, this chapter will first investigate the rigid body angular momentum vector H and its derivative, along with the kinetic energy, before developing the rotational equations of motion. Then the rigid body dynamics in a torque-free environment will be studied in more detail. Further, the dynamics of a rigid body are studied when a set of variable speed control moment gyroscopes is present or the body is under the influence of gravity gradient torques.
The following development will parallel the development in Section 2.5 for the case in which no body deformations were allowed. Let the moment be taken either about the center of mass or the inertial coordinate frame origin. In either case Euler's equation reduces to
Let R be the inertial position vector of an infinitesimal mass element d m. Let's choose the moment to be defined about the coordinate frame origin O. It...
