Ask Ethan: Why Don't We Shoot Earth's Garbage Into The Sun? - 0 views
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there’s a certain amount of energy keeping us bound to our world (gravitational potential energy)
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James Linzel on 06 Oct 16Ep=mass x Acc-g x distance
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For Earth, we’d have to move at about 7.9 km/s (17,700 mph) to attain orbit and at about 11.2 km/s (25,000 mph) to escape from Earth’s gravity.
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If we wanted to escape from the Solar System completely, we’d only have to gain another 12 km/s of speed (for a total of 42 km/s) to get out of here!
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There are two ways a spacecraft can take advantage of a gravity assist: To fly the spacecraft so that it comes from behind a planet, flies in front of it and gets gravitationally sling-shotted back behind the planet again. To fly the spacecraft so that it comes from ahead of a planet’s orbit, flies behind it and gets gravitationally sling-shotted back in front of the planet again.
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There are two ways a spacecraft can take advantage of a gravity assist: To fly the spacecraft so that it comes from behind a planet, flies in front of it and gets gravitationally sling-shotted back behind the planet again. To fly the spacecraft so that it comes from ahead of a planet’s orbit, flies behind it and gets gravitationally sling-shotted back in front of the planet again.
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in the first case, the planet tugs on the spacecraft and the spacecraft tugs on the planet in such a way that the planet winds up gaining a little bit of speed with respect to the Sun, becoming slightly more loosely bound, while the spacecraft loses quite a bit of speed (thanks to its much smaller mass), and becomes more tightly bound: transferring to a lower-energy orbit. The second case works the opposite way: the planet loses a little speed and becomes more tightly bound, while the spacecraft gains quite a lot of speed and transfers to a higher-energy orbit.