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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1148
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Posted - 2014.08.16 14:01:00 -
[1] - Quote
Well it's really your thrust to mass ratio.
As for manoeuvrability it'd probably be equal. Every newton of force going in one direction has to be countered in order to stop travelling in that direction. If the Mass to Thrust ratio is the same it really just comes down to how quickly they can turn the vessel to then thrust in the other direction.
Though sci-fi ship battles a-la EVE/Mass Effect/Star Wars/Battlestar etc is really just space submarines. Nobody takes into account orbital mechanics when fighting near a planet/star/other gravitational body. And small fighters making banking turns is ridiculous.
This idea of travelling in space being point your nose at where you want to go and burn until you get there is completely counter to how actual space travel works.
If you really want to get your head around how complicated trying to move things around in space is I suggest playing Kerbal Space Program.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1151
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Posted - 2014.08.16 15:09:00 -
[2] - Quote
Well a basic example of the problem with flying straight at your destination:
You have a space station in orbit over the Earth with a satellite in the same orbital path but about a mile behind.
If you wanted to dock the satellite with the station and pointed the satellite at the station and did a quick burn, adding a few feet per second of velocity to try and catch up, the satellite wouldn't get closer to the station, it'd actually get further away.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1170
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Posted - 2014.08.16 23:41:00 -
[3] - Quote
TechMechMeds wrote:
Let me think.
*10 minutes elapse*
So, its because its already behind?.......and would need to go a lot faster?.
Yeah I think I get it, would it need to go double the speed to catch up?, double the stations speed?.
No, an object in orbit has a specific speed for that orbit. i.e. you cant have two objects in the same orbit going different speeds.
An orbit is really just a controlled fall where your forward momentum is so high that by the time you've fallen to the centre point of the earths gravity you're already past it.
An increase in velocity in the direction of travel would take you further from the earth and thus further from the orbit of the space station.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXOBe-CG4cw
In this video after the 7 min mark he has to have his ship and the target in two slightly different orbits to allow the target to catch up.
Another way of thinking of it is imagine a circular race track with multiple lanes. You have a car that when going at an exact speed (say 100mph) is unable to turn left any harder. If it is in the inside lane and it increases its speed to say 120mph it'll get forced into the next right hand lane for a bit allowing it to have a longer time to turn and then it can go back into the left lane for a bit but eventually that speed is going to be too much and it'll get forced back into the right hand lane.
A car staying in the centre lane is still going to orbit the track faster as it is on the inside and has less distance to travel.
Or, sit on one of those spinning office chairs, push yourself into a free spin and hold your legs out straight. with the momentum you have you might be spinning once every 2 seconds, then pull your legs in towards your body and you'll start spinning faster, maybe once per second. Same mechanic.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1171
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Posted - 2014.08.17 00:11:00 -
[4] - Quote
Spademan wrote:I see what you're saying Bay, but let me ask, is there any way short of reversing the direction of the orbit for the satellite to intersect with, and dock at, the space station?
You're not reversing the direction of the orbit, as that would be a massive waste of fuel never mind that now the intersecting orbits would be on a very high speed collision course (in the tens of thousands of miles per hour range).
What your doing is, as I said above, pulling yourself into the inside lane so you're coming up beside the station at a nice slow speed of maybe a few feet per second.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1173
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Posted - 2014.08.17 00:52:00 -
[5] - Quote
Monty Mole Clone wrote:didnt they recently prove the existence of the higs boson and higs field? if so all we need is a higs force field to renders anything inside massless and whamo speed of light baby.
of course you would have to get over the fact that where ever you went, when you came back the dirty apes would be in charge because of relativistic effects and whatnot
Oh sure we'll get right on that, might take a couple of days though.
On second thought we already have a way of making things massless. It's called a nuclear bomb.
E=MC2 and all that.
The Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima converted 600 to 860 milligrams (0.021 to 0.028 ounces) of matter into massless energy.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
OSG Planetary Operations
Covert Intervention
1231
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Posted - 2014.08.22 07:22:00 -
[6] - Quote
Arkena Wyrnspire wrote:
Also, my understanding of the term astrophysics was that it tended to be a bit more astronomical in nature than what we've been discussing - it thinks more about the nature of heavenly bodies like stars, black holes, etc rather than the actual motions of these things. Pedantic, probably, but the ideas with momentum, inertia, etc are very much Newtonian physics.
I had the same thought, but didn't want to get stuck in the details. Yeah, it's kinda crazy how complicated what we're discussing is but it doesn't use any math more complicated than what we had in the 17th century.
Where as full blown astrophysics uses a lot of more recent developments, Relativity and all that.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
Opus Arcana
Covert Intervention
1432
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Posted - 2014.09.09 10:28:00 -
[7] - Quote
GLOBAL fils'de RAGE wrote: a pebble at near light speed travel would be a mini nuke.
Depends on your definition of near light speed. 95% of light speed and "mini nuke" doesn't quite do it justice.
I'd have to check the math but it might be more than the entire worlds nuclear arsenal.
Google "XKCD What If" for a bunch of physics answers for random questions like this.
We'll bang, OK?
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Bayeth Mal
Opus Arcana
Covert Intervention
1432
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Posted - 2014.09.09 10:44:00 -
[8] - Quote
Also I forgot to mention for the OP.
It depends on your definition of "quickest."
Lets say you have two ships that weigh the same. One has a fuel burning engine that produces 10,000 pounds of thrust and has 200 seconds of fuel. And the other has a highly efficient ion engine producing 50 pounds of thrust but can keep going for 48 hours.
1st one can change course quickly etc, the other can attain a higher top speed and can produce more thrust over all.
We'll bang, OK?
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