Questions tagged [orbital-mechanics]
For questions dealing with how bodies interact with each other in space via gravitation.
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How close could a gas giant be to my planet without it becoming a moon?
This is an M-type system. Let's take Trappist 1 as an example star (0.0898 Mass of the Sun) and Trappist 1e as an example planet (0.772 mass of the earth, approx 0.029 AU from the star). Assume for ...
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Distances needed to make this system stable
Let's take the Trappist-1 system, and specifically, I'm thinking about the star itself and Trappist 1e because it's the most habitable of the seven planets:
Trappist 1 star is approximately 8.98% of ...
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Day/night cycle on an S-type planet
[Answered myself below] I've seen similar questions have been asked before, but the details are slightly different.
Say you have a tidally-locked, roughly Earth-mass rocky planet in the habitable zone ...
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Could this sort of celestial system work?
I am attempting to create a pair of planets, both capable of harboring life. Which happens to also be quite colossal in design. We are talking about 10.13x the size of Earth.
So the system I am ...
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What dictates whether an orbit gets disrupted or stabilised due to an orbital resonance?
Context:
I've got an asteroid belt analogue situated between a Gas giant and a Super-earth. I knew about resonances, so I started calculating them and placing some of them in the belt, especially ones ...
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Could a terrestrial planet have a stable orbit of rings? [duplicate]
Planet Phileas, similar in size to Earth. Fourth star in a binary star system with a p-type orbit.
Changes may be necessary and I'm open to constructive criticism. This question includes two parts. ...
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Can Integral Trees be Sailed?
In the book The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, he presents people living in a novel environment. There is a neutron star (quite old and so cooled off mostly) around a more ordinary star. And orbiting ...
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Can a rocky planet form between gas giants?
The Question
I am working on filling in the planets of the Ilus system. I am setting up a strange, huge, low density, sort of habitable world in the gap between two gas giants. Is there a way for a ...
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How can we move the Moon into a more distant orbit by using electrostatic charge?
Earthers wish to change the Moon's orbit in order to adjust the length of a lunar month. They intend to do this by giving the Earth and the Moon equal electrostatic charges thereby pushing them ...
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Geostationary orbit around a tidally-locked planet?
Is it possible to have a satellite (natural or artificial) in orbit around a planer which is tidally locked to its sun?
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Orbital mechanics- 2 objects, different mass same trajectory
I have a multi-ring space station built around an asteroid, but not physically connected. Station has significantly more mass than the asteroid.
As the two approach a star and swing around it, will ...
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How many days in a week, and weeks in a month, would be needed for this specific lunar cycle?
So, this world has three moons.
Blue, Red, Yellow.
There are eight months in the year. Each month has a unique "full moon" combination resulting in a different colored sky. That is the ...
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Is a binary moon possible? [duplicate]
So, i have heard of triple star systems where two stars orbit each other in a binary pair, and both orbit a third, more massive sun. I was wondering whether this would work on a smaller scale; an ...
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Is it possible for a star to orbit a planet? [duplicate]
At first the answer seems simple, no, but the more I think about it the more it seems this might be possible.
For the sake of the question don’t think about the probability of this actually happening, ...
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How To Calculate Moon Cycles To Cause A Lunar Event Every [250] Years?
My first post here, so friendly hello!
I need some bigger brains than mine, or just some other braincells to reverberate off of. I have a world with three moons and I'm trying to calculate the length ...
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433 Eros hits the Moon. How much rock hits the Earth?
A la this image I made.
The "how" (nuclear pulse drive "adjusting" Eros's orbit at its aphelion) and "why" (uber-sized Rods from God) isn't particularly relevant — all ...
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Could an object exist at the barycentre of two stars
Returning to the powerful clarkean civilisation in this question What compounds could be used to dye a gas giant the colour of a rainbow?
These same artistically inclined omnipotent beings have ...
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Effects on gravity on close binary planets
Let's say there's 2 planets orbit eachother as close as possible so they're oval shaped but not close enough to reach the roche's limit and be pulled apart. How would gravity be affected on the ...
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What configuration should the worlds of a long lasting galactic empire take in the galaxy?
I have come across many galaxy maps showing the dominion/borders of one empire or another in different works of fiction. The first that comes to mind is WH40k for which the galaxy map of the different ...
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is it possible for a binary planet system to have long term moons orbiting only one of the planets?
What I'm thinking of is a binary planet system each with rings, 2 moons orbiting the larger one and one moon orbiting the smaller one.
The mass of the larger planet is 5 Earth masses, while the ...
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If someone blew up mars, how screwed is earth?
Mars has a gravitational binding energy of ~5x10^30 jouleS. If a bomb went off on mars that released that much energy, how much danger would the earth be in. Additionally, would debris striking earth ...
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How fast can a moon pass overhead?
For purposes of realistic, but otherworldly visualisations of foreign worlds I'm wondering what the fastest speed is that a moon will track through the visible sky, as observed from the body of a ...
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Hot Jupiter L2 Station! Reasons to build, and challenges
I'm working on a somewhat* hard scifi story set in a solar system that contains a hot jupiter. Frankly building a large station in the shade (?) of the L2 point of the hot jupiter sounds metal, and I'...
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Is it possible for two moons to align once a year?
The planet is just like earth and the first moon is the same as earth's moon, but there's a second moon further away. I'd like to know how plausible it is for both moons to align once a year. The ...
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How far would a planet with these specifics orbiting a sun-like star have to be for solar wind to not strip the atmosphere?
I'm currently writing up a world inhabited by tall, humanoid crow-like aliens, and I have all the specifics down, I'm just struggling to figure out how far said planet, with the characteristics listed ...
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Is it more efficient to launch a spaceplane from a space elevator to a destination on the planet, or to simply fly the plane through the atmosphere? [closed]
Suppose you have a planet that needs to send and receive cargo from a space elevator at the equator. Due to various environmental factors, surface-based transportation is unviable so all cargo needs ...
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Generating gravity
how would I generate gravity in an orbital station without spinning in a really fast circle or making it as big as a planet, or would I have to cut my losses and just moon-base my idea (I'm trying not ...
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How would Orbiting Lenses work for a Prophesied Day?
So I was thinking of having religions prophesy of a day where there'd be a massive beam of light coming down from on high at a specific holy spot. How would this be possible with lens orbiting the ...
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Can a habitable S-type planet and three habitable P-type planets exist in one binary star system?
In this solar system are two stars, named Genesis and Exodus. Currently, I don't know the types because the need of habitability on the planets might affect the requirements for these stars. They ...
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How do I make longer seasons realistic on an earth like planet?
I am making a setting for a various TTRPGs that me and my friends want to play.
I want this world to have longer seasons than earth. I was thinking about 3-4 earth years each season.
This is difficult,...
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Can an earth-like planet exist in a circumbinary orbit around two k-class stars?While also having up to two dozen other planets in circumbinary orbit?
I have a plot arc in mind, but it all hinges on the feasibility of an earth-like world existing in circumbinary orbit around two k-class (or g-class) stars. The looming danger in the story arc is that ...
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How fast should my planet spin in order to be tidally locked?
I am designing a habitable planet with a diameter of 12.879 km. orbiting around a K5V orange dwarf star. Due to a number of planetery collisions during its creation, the planet ended up being tidally ...
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How would a planet with three suns, orbiting only one work?
Okay, I am planning to make a planet that has three suns, and orbits one of them. Each of the suns has its own orbital path, so it's possible for the planet to have one sun, two suns, or three suns in ...
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Could a double binary system support planets?
Disclaimer: I know that the term ‘double binary’ isn’t real (yet).
Hypothetically, there is two pairs of binary systems with the center of gravity for the individual binaries are orbiting in a binary ...
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If Venus were at .85 AU, Earth at 1.1 AU, and Mars at 1.4 AU from the Sun, would they disrupt each other's orbits at conjunction?
I have returned to this forum from Astronomy with this question because it immediately got down-voted. Maybe these hypothetical questions are more appropriate here? I am happy to take advice from ...
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Where could we add a new planet to the inner solar system?
Assume there was a super advanced alien race that for some reason, wanted to add a new planet, of lets say 1 Earth mass, into the Solar System. Where in the inner Solar System (The part of the solar ...
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How would the synodic period of Venus change if both Venus and Earth were moved equal distances away from the Sun? [closed]
Let us say that Earth and Venus are both moved 10 million additional miles from the sun. How would the synodic period of Venus appear to change for an observer on Earth? If 584 days is Venus' current ...
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What is mathematical formula for finding the mean surface temperature on a planet in our solar system?
This question is to assume the common solar luminosity of approx $4 \times 10^{26}$ Watts.
The mean flux of Earth at, for example, 1.1 AU would be about 1176 watts--but how can I calculate mean ...
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Planet Orbital Zone and Year Length
So I'm building a fantasy world that takes place on a planet with a circumference of about 18,500 miles (it's average temperature is 40℉), and it orbits a Blue-Giant.
How long would a year be, and how ...
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How fast do binary stars orbit each other? [closed]
Specifically I am wondering how fast a Class G star and a white dwarf would orbit each other in a type P binary system. How far away would they have to be from each other to have a stable orbit and ...
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How close can a planet with an elliptical orbit get to another planet?
I am writing about a fictional cluster of different solar systems and in one of them I created a planet that harboured life. I wanted to make it a bit more interesting and came up with the idea that ...
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How would I make my Quintuple Star System Stable?
So I've been working on a star system that I want to have inhabitable planets, so by stable I mean stable on the timescale of the stars themselves; billions of years at least.
So my initial plan was a ...
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How large would a chunk of ice have to be to do lasting harm if it were 'thrown' at Earth?
I'm working on a story involving life on Europa being upturned dramatically by contact from a probe sent from Earth. I know the chances of life, let alone intelligent life, are pretty slim on Europa, ...
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Could a large chunk of Europa's ice crust be 'thrown' at Earth?
I'm working on a story involving life on Europa being upturned dramatically by contact from a probe sent from Earth. Found this community while researching, and have found a lot of great ideas. I know ...
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How could I explain how a “three body or more system” orbit works? [closed]
Three-body orbits are said to be unstable and non-existent. Star Wars introduced us to Utapau which is likely highly unstable. Yet in that universe it works. What are some possible explanations for ...
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Possible deltaV savings by usage of Lagrange points in intra-solar transit
The question here is actually pretty straightforward (not),
So I'm going to expound upon it. Lagrange points are areas within a gravitational system which experience near null gravity. At least, that'...
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Torus orbit for Dyson swarms
For a Dyson swarm (a large collections of advanced SBSP satellites usually in heliocentric orbit), the orbit is an important and difficult component. A possible orbital system is a torus-shaped orbit (...
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Gas behavior in geosynchronous orbit
I am trying my hand at worldbuilding a sci-fi setting, specifically a partial/broken ringworld. Specifically I have trouble wrapping my head around gases. I have 3 scenarios, solutions of which will ...
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Would dumping debris into orbit around a planet keep its inhabitants from being able to leave? [closed]
Assuming a planet of similar mass and atmosphere as earth, how much and how often do I need to add orbital debris to prevent space travel?
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How would a spaceship not affected by gravity navigate between planets?
Presume there exists a metal called X-matter that has all the properties of steel, except it is repulsed by normal-matter instead of attracted. (For instance, a block of it would accelerate 9.81 m/s/s ...
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