If you look closely at the animation, you'll see the little white line that indicates the earth's solar path is "wiggling" a bit as the animation runs. That lead me to believe that the actual plot was barycentric inertial, but the "viewing window" just zoomed in and followed the earth along that white line, keeping the axes corotating with the earth's orbit. That gives the same visual effect as doing it from an earth-centered frame, but you'll see the white line wiggling. If you just pulled back enough and stop moving the window, you'd see the whole shebang going around the sun.

-Richard

I'm not sure the moon was of major influence to the orbits seen in that animation. Didn't it slingshot back out of earth orbit due to the orientation of the final ellipse?

I don't believe so. The object was in a somewhat metastable orbit around Earth, albeit highly precessional. It seemed indeed to be shallowing, and that was probably due to solar perturbance. I doubt such an orbit would have become any more stable, nor remained Earth-centered for more than a month. But things really happened when it made the close pass at the Moon, so my money's on its having been tossed out of Earth orbit by the Moon.

Also note that this animation keeps the earth staionary, hence it doesn't correctly depict the solar orbit of the stage.

Yes, that would confuse someone who isn't familiar with the solar component of the orbit.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Thanks to whichever mod fixed the thread title!

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Jay, that's irritating. I did three+ body orbitals at Columbia back in 1969, using the mainframe. It's hard to believe that, with all the new computing power we've obtained since then, such a simple equation could soak up so much current computing time.

Or is it a case where the accuracy of the parameters/results has tightened?

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The accuracy has tightened, the perturbations are more important, and the orbits are becoming more complex and daring. The long runs are mostly for Kuiper Belt objects -- there was a paper presented in about 2002 or 2003 in Baltimore that described a new parallel-processing algorithm for it.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

That is just Newton. Do it with GR, and whooo boy. Well, there's no need for GR for most of this stuff, thankfully. GR is notorious for stretching numerical techiques to the breaking point. Look at some of the recent strong field simulation of neutron star and black hole mergers and your jaw will drop.

-Richard

BenGun wrote:

By the way, I like your signature.

I may have missed something here, but you seemed to be asking why the moon affected the path of the object but not vice versa.

The answer is that the mass of the moon is so huge that the tiny tug the object gives it is completely unnoticeable, just as all the satellites going round the earth don't affect its path in any detectable way.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

mike alexander answers the question. The animation distorts the scale of the objects to each other. Object J0023 is tiny compared to the Earth and Moon. Note that the Moon dot actually appears larger than the Earth dot - not very scale accurate there, either.

If you're standing on a bathroom scale and a fly lands on you, you will not register a blip on the scale.

It is difficult to perceive differences in motion caused purely by the Moon rather than by the Earth/Moon pair. I try looking for changes in speed or direction specifically when the Moon is closer compared to the Earth. Anything that upsets the smooth curve motion of a regular ellipse.

To my eye, the first ellipse is very egg-shaped and smooth, with the highest loop (I forget apogee and perigee). The second ellipse is a bit fatter and lower, the third is higher again almost matching the first ellipse. The third is also lopsided. The fourth is lower, the fifth still lower, and the sixth even lower. At the end of the sixth ellipse, the object approaches the Moon in it's path, and it turns and passes between the Earth and Moon and ejects from the system. To my eye, the speed is also enhanced by that approach, though that could be a trick because of the inherent Kepler Law speed increase on close approach to the Earth/Moon. However, the curve change seems significant to me. To my eye, the reason the object ejects is because of the momentum slingshot from close chase of the Moon. Otherwise, I would expect the pattern of precessing declining ellipses to have continued. IANA Orbital Mechanic -YMMV.

It'd be nice if it could be used for cycler assembly at some point.

The lunar proximity looks critical to the orbit in several ways. The final ejection especially - it appears to have come around just behind the moon, and caught a slingshot effect that catapulted it out of the system.

I think the underlying fact here is the validity of the missions. It's clear we propelled and recovered astronauts to and from a gravity well that's six times stronger than that of the Moon. Why is it, then, that so many people find it impossible to believe that we were somehow unable to go the last 17% of the way, or that we weren't able to be in space so long when just a couple years later both ourselves and the Russians set space longevity records many times that of what was required for the Apollo missions?

Some people need to have their heads examined because, apparently, facts are unable to pass beyond the barriers of either their eyes or their ears.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.

Too true, and not just Apollo Hoax believers either unfortunately.

I worked for NASA for 32 years. I can dispel the myth that we didn't go to the moon. I witnessed the behemoth Saturn V rockets lift off, knew many of the astronauts and was quite familiar with the flight plans.

Creating this event in Hollywood is a farce

BTW...the filming of Tora Tora Tora cost something on the order of 25X the cost of the actual invasion

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Joe Bartoszek

BTW...the filming of Tora Tora Tora cost something on the order of 25X the cost of the actual invasion

The Japanese didn't invade Pearl Harbor; they merely attacked military installations with carrier-based aircraft. Your point is interesting; however, I'm not certain the comparison is completely valid.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Hello friens, I'm new in the Forum.
I'm found of Apollo 11 Mission, and in Celerstia community http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic....er=asc&start=0 I'm in a three member team working to make a 3D Apollo 11 absolutely real flight reconstruction.
For this we need to know what exactly happened to the Apollo 11 Saturn S-IVB third stage.
From the quoted script it looks that it was sent in solar orbit, but I have not yet found a document affirming it (pay attention, I found it in the flight check list, but not in AFTER flight documents, so I have still some doubt on what really happened.
Someone can address me to an official document that could eliminate any doubt?
Thanks a lot, appreciated.
Bye

Andrea