Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Need help figuring acceleration out of a gravity well

+0
−0

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--initial velocity, and 1.5 G of thrust at perihelion, but then lost its engines for about three days. It has escape velocity (where do I find that for various solar orbital distances?), but not having thrust when you need it to climb out of a gravity well has to be a problem.

When my ship's crew gets its engines back online, their thrust is limited: I haven't decided how much yet, but well under one g, possibly 0.1 g; and for a few days, at least, they can only thrust 1/2 the time.

I can do simple time-acceleration-distance calculations, or use online relativistic spaceship calculators and get ~ the same answers for a simple, continuous acceleration. But nothing I have found in weeks of surfing tells me how to figure-in climbing out of a deep gravity well, or how to handle intermittent thrust, or what a realistic curved distance for a fast transit orbit Sol to Jupiter might be.

Are there any orbital mechanics in the crowd?

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/66202. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »