Posts tagged orbital-mechanics
(edited to fix obvious confusion, as detected by AlexP) The idea is that the plane of the moon orbit is aproximately at a 90 degree angle to the plane of the planet orbit. Would that be stable, o...
What orbital parameters could I give seven Mars/Earth sized planets so they have stable orbits around a G-type star like The Sun, they need to fit between 0.5 AU and 1.7 AU.
Assume the observer was on the ground, 4 km from the base (bottom) of the Space Elevator. Assume a "standard" Earth Elevator "tethered" at <= 20 degrees of equator, made of diamond nanothread...
This is all about a thought experiment : Is there an hypothetical (or may it be real?) case of a stellar system, in which both methods of transit and radial velocities, are invalidated by some or...
Scenario for a novel: Earth mass planet (say between 0.8 and 1.4 Earth masses) captured as moon by migrating gas-giant (say 5 Jupiter masses) (not wedded to this setting, moon can be bigger or s...
Alright, this is an edit of my previous question, in response to a number of urges to clarify it. I'll do my best to be clear and concise. How long would it take a spaceship, locked in geostationa...
I am trying to design a world where one pole is very cold, and the other is very hot. I don't mean that there would be instant death in either, but it is colder than our South Pole on one end and w...
Imagine a pair of black holes in orbit around each other. I'm wondering how this would distort their mutual event horizons. In fact would it be possible to "break" the event horizons by reducing th...
Suppose there was a ternary system where the stars are effectively identical in mass, luminosity, radius, etc. These three stars circle a central point rather than two orbiting a larger third. At t...
Based on my recent series of questions: here and here. The giant known as Jupiter has moved to the inner Solar System and Earth and Mars have become it's moons (despite all the odds). The moon of ...
I am trying to create a planet for a fantasy role-playing game where the equator is an impassible region of ice. Ideally, I want to find a science-based solution to this and not have to resort to ...
Specifically, how many 5 to 10 kilometer asteroids could you fit around the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points? Does the number change depending on which Lagrange point it is?
A Milankovitch cycle is defined in Universe Today as a cyclical movement related to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. There are three elements to a Milankovitch cycle that affects the amount ...
Imagine the Earth is sucked into a wormhole powerful enough to pull it out of it's current orbit. the ones who created the wormhole wanted to move earth to protect it however didn't want their acti...
What would be the effects of an Earth-like planet with a longer year and longer lunar orbit? I have a planet with 432 days in a year and a lunar cycle of 36 days, with 12 months at 36 days each. Th...
There is a terrestrial planet called Paveiha that orbits a small Red Dwarf star. It is the third planet in a system of 10 planets. Paveiha is close enough to the Sun that it is tidally locked and t...
Currently, Earth's eccentricity (orbital shape) is 0.0167086. Zero is a perfect circle whereas One is parabolic escape orbit and any greater becomes a hyperbola. And in the theory of the Milankov...
Let us assume we have a Kerr metric (rotating) black hole of 10 Sol-masses, spinning at 300 revs/s (as measured by a rest frame observer). What yield strength (assume that yield strength is limiti...
The planet I'm working with has two different moons, both around the same size (3/4ths that of the main planet). Is it possible for the planet to support the orbit of these moons, especially with t...
If the ground end of a space elevator was severed, what would the unfolding event look like from the ground? What would the movement(s) look like, and over what period of time? I'm assuming that ...
My theory is that if a moon's orbit is situated in between the exoplanet and a second satellite, tidal heating could occur and turn the moon into a sustainable heat source for the host planet. Coul...
This is the link of what I have in mind, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKvnn1r-9Iw , can a planet rotate chaotically through this system and still be habitable? If it's going to collapse after a ...
Inspired by this question, suppose that the Earth decided to move its orbit much further out to reduce the effects of, say, global warming or the effects of a dying sun (or far enough to make this ...
I am looking for help on the following: Will that have any affect on the length of days and nights? Would having two moons create a higher body of water on the planet due to increased tides? (i....
I'm writing a spaceship that just performed an Oberth maneuver around the sun, 10 million km out, and is accelerating toward a gravity sling with Jupiter. It had a high--not certain how high yet--i...
I'm building a Dyson sphere - a real one, like Freeman Dyson originally proposed, made of swarms of solar collectors in independent orbits that fully surround the star, something like this: Each...
A Kardashev Type III civilisation has need of a long-scale timepiece, and as such has arranged a series of planets around a black hole such that their orbital periods can be used to tell the time i...
What would the orbit of a planet orbiting two stars look like? Would the planet orbit the stars simultaneously or one after the other? How strong might be the gravity well of such a system be? Any ...
I've read this question, but most of its answers don't seem to apply to my question directly other than possibly this one, which suggests that in order to change a planet's orbit, you would have to...
In my universe, gravity varies with the inverse of the distance (instead of the inverse square of the distance). I already know that this means that all circular orbits around the same object will ...
I'm considering a story set about fifty years (2065) in the future. It takes a rather optimistic view; space exploration has led to colonies on the Moon and Mars, as well as several space stations ...
I have an asteroid. I want it to hit Earth. The best way to hit Earth is from behind the Sun, which makes it harder to detect you if you're an asteroid. Now, I have a basic understanding of things ...
I am interested in building a little world involving a very realistic asteroid pair, orbiting each other, and would really appreciate some help with numbers and science for this. I would like two l...
I have a mars-sized "planet" orbiting a superearth-sized mother-planet. There is also another satellite with an abnormal elliptic orbit, but it is of minor concern for now. This is the resume of ...
Say the moon is drifting further away from Earth at an astonishing rate of 3.14159km each year due to the crazy tides, the rising sea level and shielding us from stray asteroids. Given 150 years ti...
I have a habitable moon orbiting a gas giant, and there is another moon orbiting the planet on a closer orbit. The cultures on the near-side of the further, habitable moon use the transit of the cl...
Imagine a starship with a tonnage of 600,000Â metric tons that must maintain an average speed of 10km/s to remain in Near Earth Orbit, that's probably going to consume much more energy than simply ...
This is a spin off from this question here. I want a spaceship or several spaceships to be able to move a planet out of its orbit around another planet. How big could the planet realistically be...
I've created a new question and worded differently to help me get the answer I want. Click here to view A planet is in orbit around a larger planet, and I want to push it out of orbit. The plane...
Says a F22 with full tank is trying to break through the thin layer of Martian atmosphere and almost moon like gravity(alright that's probably too exaggerated) anyway say there is a runway stretchi...
Setting A binary planet system consisting of two terrestrial planets (hereafter Alpha/α and Beta/β). The system barycentre (C) is between the two planets; for the sake of this question the exact...
I want to have a star cluster of main-sequence stars (yellow dwarfs [like our sun], orange, and red dwarfs) that are on a distance of 1-2 light years between each other, so interstellar travel is ...
This is an answer I found while looking up random factoids. And it's gotten me wondering. ((If I should take down the picture, and just paraphrase the text, please let me know.)) Charlie here i...
I have a habitable moon orbiting a gas giant. The moon is not tidally locked with the gas giant. The orbital plane of the moon around the gas giant is the same as the orbital plane of the gas giant...
I have just found out that the Milankovitch Cycle, a machination responsible for the creation of the Pleistocene ice ages, has its part played partly by orbit from the entire solar system. As a re...
I was wondering if three planets can rotate around each other so that: Two of the planets are smaller and rotate around each other Both of the smaller planets rotate around another, bigger plan...
By Mars sized I mean with masses between 0.10 (M⊕) and 0.25 (M⊕), the planets need to have independent orbits around the star. We can assume the habitable zone stretches from 0.70 AU, to 1.5 A...
Like, if you massively accelerated the Moon's orbit or propelled it somehow so that it moved from one side of the Earth to the other in a very short period of time, what effect would that have on t...
Okay so I have a sci-fi world masquerading as a fantasy world where numerous different genetically-engineered humanoids live on nine different ringworlds orbiting an artificial Earth-mass black hol...
An earlier question here concerning a cube-shaped planet got me thinking. Suppose an artificial world-sized engineering project as described in this answer The K-II civilization that built it ...
