Jeff, The very best explanation/illustration for gravity-assist that I've ever seen is a visual one from the educational video series "The Mechanical Universe", episode 24, "Navigating in Space." The graphics are absolutely astounding and they literally make the newtonian equations come alive. I wish this series was available when I was in college. After signing up, you can see it on-line here: http://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html?pop=yes&vodid=59326&pid=573 Best regards, Brian --- Jeff Umbarger <jumbarger2000@yahoo.com> wrote: > Thanks Jim, > So from what I gathered from the link, the only > thing you get from a "Gravity Slingshot" is a change > in direction and some less-than-100percent of the > planets orbital velocity (wrt the sun). From this I > would gather that it is better to slingshot off > Mercury (fastest orbital velocity) than Jupiter > (much > slower), right? For instance, if you were sending a > probe to Saturn and it was on the other side of the > Sun from Earth at launch, you should wait until > Mercury is ahead of Earth by 90 degrees around the > sun > and "bank off" Mercury to go on to Saturn, right? > > - Jeff > ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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