4 thoughts on “An Orbital Mechanics Problem”

  1. The problem is much more interesting if you’re allowed to start from EML1/2. I suspect you can avoid GCR problems altogether by choosing a high speed trajectory, even with my favourite flavour of near term propellant. I’m tantalisingly close to being able to do the math, but my orbital mechanics foo needs a bit more upgrading.

  2. What I found fascinating about this post is the large number of commenters who were unable to touch the actual physics, but were eloquent in their criticism of the problem, its ambiguities, limitations, et cetera.

    Somehow, this just perfectly encapsulates the narcissist wing of the modern American, to me. Folks who are brilliant in their critical thinking, but completely unable to solve practical problems. Can’t find their ass with both hands, but capable of brilliant and witty extemporaneous criticism of why such a problem is ill-posed, the ambiguous definitions of the words “ass” and “find,” et cetera.

  3. It’s not ill-posed at all. He gives better g-limits, action time, thrust profile, and end-point constraints than at least one current NASA program with which I am intimately familiar.

    Rand is correct that a closed-form solution won’t do, but the numerical solution can be implemented in a spreadsheet…or, in my case, MathCad.

  4. As the mathematical definitions would be meaningless to our every day experience.Every smooth spacetime, regardless of how curved is Minkowski if you consider a small enough patch of it. How do we determine pi on the Earth when its surface is curved? You don’t even notice the curvature because your circles are small compared to the size of the Earth. If you were on a billiard ball, you could still draw good circles by making them a few millimeters across, etc.

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