this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Huh. I would have thought that once they break orbit that the sun's gravity well would do the heavy ~~lifting~~ pulling.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you care to learn orbital mechanics, Kerbal Space Program is a great teacher.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That one's been sitting unplayed in my library for a very long time. I guess it's time to give it a shot.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

And if you want more complicated orbital mechanics there's a ksp mod: Principia which adds n-body orbital mechanics over ksp's relatively simple patched conic orbital simulation.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Imagine that you're standing on a train and have a baseball. If you throw the ball off the train, the ball will still have momentum in the direction of the train's movement.

If you want to throw the ball to a friend the train just passed, you have to be able to throw the ball faster than the train is moving or it will never reach them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Now all im imagineing is a ball floating mid air and it's beautiful

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mythbusters did this! (Well, the ball fell to the ground, but for a split second it looked like it was hovering after being shot out of a cannon.)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Oh nice. Im re-watching then on youtube at the moment so will have to keep an eye out for that one.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

The vessel would still have a lot of speed after escaping earth's orbit, so the trajectory would become a large orbit around the sun. You still have to slow down by about ~30km/s (or ~100 000 km/h) to make that orbit intercept with the sun's surface.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"Breaking orbit" still leaves you in almost the same orbit around the sun as the earth. You need to slow down a lot to bring the periapsis of the orbit within the suns surface.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

once you break out of earth orbit you are now in an orbit around the sun, similar to earths.