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

Quick! How far away is that asteroid?

+0
−0

How might an enterprising spacer, mining the rings of Saturn, go about quickly measuring/estimating the velocity of and distance to a nearby moving object (asteroid, habitat, pirate, etc)? Bonus points for measuring acceleration.

The lower tech, the better! The Saturnians would rather a microprocessor not be in the loop at all. They are a tough bunch, and would prefer a more reliable method with less electronics/moving parts, even if it meant lots of training or practice. Human>mechanical>electronic.

Note that this is more for quick maneuvering, rather than plotting trajectories that will be accurate over long distances/times (though if the method works for those, that's great too). Distances are tens of kilometers (maybe 150km at the outside), and the relative velocities are on the order of 100km/hr.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
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/171097. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »