In the event you watch sci-fi motion pictures, you’d suppose that flying a spaceship is rather like driving a barely extra difficult automotive (or a Winnebago in Spaceballs). And George Lucas gave us these galactic battles with pilots who appear like they’re flying fighter jets on Earth.
To see what I imply, we’ll first simply seize some primary physics and construct ourselves just a little mannequin of orbital mechanics, after which I’ve some cool simulations of an tried docking maneuver. Learn on!
Round Orbits
Think about flying in a round orbit round Earth. There are three massive physics concepts we have to perceive this type of movement. First, centripetal acceleration. Recall that acceleration is a measure of how briskly the speed of an object adjustments.
However velocity isn’t simply pace, it’s pace in a specific route—in different phrases, it’s a vector. If an object is shifting in a circle, its route is consistently altering, which suggests it’s consistently accelerating, even when its pace is fixed!
The route of this acceleration is towards the middle of the circle. (“Centripetal” means center-pointing.) The magnitude of the acceleration is determined by each the magnitude of the speed (v)(i.e., the pace) and the radius (r) of the circle. This provides the next equation:
Courtesy of Rhett Allen
