Breakthrough (Finally)

I believe that I have fixed the problem with the simulated ribbon.

I had gone into the model and was adding data to each ribbon segment and point to record some of the local variables computed when performing point dynamics (effects of gravity and centripetal acceleration) and ribbon dynamics (elasticity, friction coefficient, relative endpoint velocities), and eliminating the local instances of the variables that I had been using across the model.

Once I debugged these changes, I re-ran with four hundred and ninety points representing the ribbon, and appeared to have stability. I ran at six hundred and a thousand, and it looked good as well.

One of the local variables that I had been using must have had an issue, like it was incorrectly accumulating value across the entire duration of the simulation. I have a listing of the entire model that I printed before I started working on the model this evening, and will spend a little time seeing if I can determine exactly what the cause of the issue was.

I have a run going right now with ten thousand ribbon points. If it looks okay, I can start changing the ribbon segment lengths, and have shorter lengths closer to the Earth's surface, and longer lengths past geosynchronous orbit.