Timeline for Why is geosynchronous orbit an altitude, rather than a velocity?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 8, 2018 at 1:01 | comment | added | SF. | As circular orbits are a special case of orbit (typically elliptic), velocity, constantly changing in elliptic orbit, is a rather inconvenient quantity to handle. But there's one nice quantity fixed for every orbit: orbital period; the time the satellite takes to return to the same point. For geosynchronous, this will be 24 hours. | |
| Jan 2, 2018 at 17:34 | answer | added | Henry Lee | timeline score: 3 | |
| Oct 15, 2017 at 17:39 | answer | added | Anthony X | timeline score: 0 | |
| Oct 15, 2017 at 4:19 | comment | added | Anthony X | Might this question be more appropriate to the physics SE? | |
| Oct 14, 2017 at 18:29 | answer | added | Mickey Gilley | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 3, 2015 at 9:31 | comment | added | Max Williams | Satellites aren't powered: yes, you could go in a rocket and fly around the earth, staying above a fixed point on the ground, at whatever height you wanted, using fuel continuously. Satellites don't use fuel (for propulsion at least, they might use fuel to make some minor tweaks to their velocity, and adjust their attitiude), they're put into an orbit (using a rocket) and then left there, where they are basically falling back to earth all the time, with a sideways velocity matching this falling so that they stay in the same orbit. | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 16:39 | answer | added | MichaelK | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 9:57 | comment | added | user | I suppose the trivial answer is that people in general have very poor grasp of what orbital velocities actually mean. It's much easier to state that "the satellite is X km/miles/furlongs/whatever above ground", than to state that "the satellite is falling forward at a rate of X km/miles/furlongs/whatever per second". | |
| Sep 2, 2015 at 5:28 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackSpaceExp/status/638946563679744000 | ||
| Sep 1, 2015 at 22:21 | comment | added | geometrian | Is geosynchronous orbit an altitude or a velocity? . . . Yes. | |
| Sep 1, 2015 at 7:40 | comment | added | RemcoGerlich | Picture what would happen with an orbit 1m above the ground, not moving sideways relative to the ground. | |
| Sep 1, 2015 at 4:11 | comment | added | CJ Dennis | Satellites don't fly, they continuously fall. If they are in true orbit, the speed at which they fall is dependant on their height above the Earth. | |
| Sep 1, 2015 at 2:26 | answer | added | Viktor Toth | timeline score: 8 | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 22:59 | vote | accept | Mason Wheeler | ||
| Aug 31, 2015 at 22:51 | answer | added | Dan | timeline score: 74 | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 22:27 | comment | added | TildalWave | desmos.com/calculator/pxdeyiunxz | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 21:34 | comment | added | Max Q Lagrange | an orbit in which the satellite continuously remains "directly overhead" for the same ground position on Earth This is a description of a geostationary orbit, which is a special case of a geosynchronous orbit. | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 21:19 | answer | added | Organic Marble | timeline score: 24 | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 21:16 | history | asked | Mason Wheeler | CC BY-SA 3.0 |