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    Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits
    Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits
    Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits
    Ebook16 pages14 minutes

    Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits

    By William Haloupek

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    About this ebook

    This is one of a planned series called Calculations for Science Fiction Writers. Other chapters will include space travel with constant acceleration, relativistic and nonrelativistic cases, elliptical orbits, rotational dynamics, and more. For those writers who want to get the details right!

    Circular orbits are the simplest kind, and some quick and easy calculations will make your science fiction stories involving planets and satellites a lot more credible. The circular orbit is a solution of what is sometimes called the one-body problem in orbital dynamics.

    Suppose you’re writing a science fiction story, involving a satellite in Earth orbit. For purposes of the plot, you want the satellite to have an orbital period of one hour. Surely, some of your readers are going to point out such an orbit is impossible – it would have to have a radius less than the radius of the Earth!

    As another example, suppose your story involves a space station, rotating on its axis, like the one in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. You want to give your readers some idea of what it’s like to live on this space station, including its size, and the effective gravity felt by passengers. Of course, those things are related to the rate of spin, which is also an important aspect of life onboard. Given the radius and the acceleration, what is the period of spin? Is it 1 second, or 100? It makes a big difference! If you just guess, some of your readers will catch you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Haloupek
    Release dateJan 30, 2013
    ISBN9781301812769
    Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits
    Author

    William Haloupek

    William Haloupek Mathematician -- PhD 1992 University of Wisconsin-Madison Astronomy is my hobby. Kind of an obsession at times! I started out in Topology and Analysis at Texas Tech, then went to Wisconsin and switched to Applied Math. Started working on a PhD thesis in General Relativity, then changed to Dynamical Systems, and ended up with a PhD in Differentiability Theory. I'm pretty comfortable with most Math and Classical Physics. Never could understand the Quantum stuff. Elementary Particle Theory makes no sense to me. I also worked as a radar engineer in the missile defense industry for 10 years. After 10 years I can't claim to be a real engineer. I just worked on the mathematical problems the engineers could come up with for me. Still, it gave me an appreciation of the "real world." Other hobbies: genealogy, coin collecting,science fiction, philosophy, hiking.

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      Book preview

      Calculations for Science Fiction Writers/Circular Orbits - William Haloupek

      Calculations for Science Fiction Writers

      Circular Orbits

      v2

      William Haloupek

      Copyright 2013 William Haloupek

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Please take a look at my other works, at Smashwords,

      https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/haloupek

      or any of the major ebook sellers. Questions and comments are welcome at

      http://haloupek.com

      This is one of a planned series called Calculations for Science Fiction Writers. Other chapters will include space travel with constant acceleration, relativistic and nonrelativistic cases, elliptical orbits, rotational dynamics, and more. For those writers who want to get the details right!

      Suppose you’re writing a science fiction story, involving a satellite in Earth orbit. For

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