Moment of inertia is diagonal and torques around the axes act independently of each other. When a body is free to rotate around an axis, torque must be applied to change its angular momentum. The amount of torque needed to cause any given angular acceleration (the rate of change in angular velocity) is proportional to the moment of inertia of the body. Moment of inertia may be expressed in units of kilogram meter squared (kg·m) in SI units and pound-foot-second squared (lbf·ft·s) in imperial or US units. Moment of inertia plays the role in rotational kinetics that mass (inertia) plays in linear kinetics
Escape velocity alternative expression for the escape velocity formula_6 particularly useful at the surface on the body is: where "r" is the distance between the center of the body and the point at which escape velocity is being calculated and "g" is the gravitational acceleration at that distance (i.e., the surface gravity). For a body with a spherically-symmetric distribution of mass, the escape velocity formula_6 from the surface is proportional to the radius assuming constant density, and proportional to the square root of the average density ρ. where formula_14 The escape velocity "relative to the surface" of a rotating body depends on