Comments on: The semi-Infinite Trek for Scotty

By: Art

Art — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:21:02 +0000

Paying to have a few grams of ash put into orbit or carried on a sounding rocket on a sub-orb shot is a goofy but respectable way to donate to civillian rocket development. Anyone see this that way?

To the chaps that don’t understand much about orbital mechanics…just a word. In orbit, you are STILL under the influence of gravity. You see, you are still falling quite fast, but you are going so fast at an angle to the ground, that you are perpetually MISSING THE GROUND, i.e. falling past the curve of the earth. Not quite fast enough, and you go low enough so that the atmosphere creates a tiny bit of drag…that slows you more, and eventually you just get lower and get more drag etc…then either re-entry or burnup. Suborbitals don’t have all that speed they need to build downrange to fall around the earth. THey usually hit an altitude and then pretty much come straight down. They will experience a few g’s of decelleration as they start hitting thick atmosphere, but they won’t develop the kind of speeds that an orbital flight has when it hits the atmosphere.

By: Astrolink [Global Edition] » Scotty (briefly) returns to space | Latest astronomy news in 11 languages

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:41:38 +0000

[…] still not sure what to think of all this (my original musings are here). But in the end it does help promote space travel, and that’s probably […]

By: Troy

Troy — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:08:44 +0000

They wanted to go to full orbit but sahry suhr, Ah don’t hav enough powrrr.
I like the Tombaugh funeral as well pretty cool. Of course my name (one of thousands) is on New Horizons which is much better.

By: David Cabernel

David Cabernel — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 00:04:45 +0000

I would hope all these remains were in a suborbital or fast decaying orbit. There is no good in having more spacejunk flying around for years up there.

Personally I think the Klingons had it right (Scotty should have known this) “Dispose of the body as you would any other garbage. It is just an empty shell”

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:36:54 +0000

“Chris, what was interesting to me about this was the possibility of the spreading of ashes onto the Moon. Launching into an Earth orbit is not something new. The cost factor to launch ashen remains of 2.6kg is much less than 1% of the normal price to launch a human who requires life support systems to be hauled up with them.

It would still be expensive, no doubt. Getting the J rockets up to orbit alone would be the real cost as they weigh much more than the remains.

I was surprised that it may not be that much harder to get ashes to the moon, though I could stll be wrong, both in principle and in math.”

I still doubt that that particular motor could get you even from earth orbit to the moon. You still have to boost the speed from about 7-8km/s (orbital) to near 11km/s (escape velocity) to reach the moon. A J motor simply doesn’t have the oomph to get something 3-4 km/s of delta v.

By: BMurray

BMurray — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:01:50 +0000

Yeah, the “lack” that keeps you in orbit is the lack of drag not the lack of gravity. You fall continuously but maintaining your forward velocity, vector adjusted for gravity. A little calculus later and you have an ellipse.

By: John Krehbiel

John Krehbiel — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:53:57 +0000

Joel Kilgore said “It’s kinda hard to fall without gravity.”

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that if there were “no gravity” in orbit, orbits would be straight. (Newton’s first law) Isn’t it gravity that keeps things in orbit?