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0 pointsaccrual1y ago0 comments

Without having details of the explosion, I imagine some parts will slow down and some will speed up. They'll all be clustered together around the original orbit, and will take many years to drift any considerable distance unless it was a very high velocity explosion.

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dylan6041y ago

I remember this taking a second to click in high school physics class. The initial thought is that after an explosion all of the pieces fly away from a stationary point. The satellite is not stationary, so the pieces "flying away" only have their speed subtracted from the speed of the satellite.

The fact that orbital speeds are faster than explosions took a bit to sink in.

idunnoman12221y ago

That’s tangential to you not being able to fly in a straight line from one Geo stationary orbit to another

dylan6041y ago

How is it tangential? It's directly related. The satellite is moving in a straight line at a specific speed. The explosion does not negate that speed, rather it just applies a momentary bit of acceleration/deceleration along a new vector. So unless an explosion can provide more acceleration that can null out the original object's speed, the pieces will remain in orbit. That's just how fast orbital speeds are, and it took a bit for that to click

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0 pointsaccrual1y ago0 comments

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dylan6041y ago

The fact that orbital speeds are faster than explosions took a bit to sink in.

idunnoman12221y ago

That’s tangential to you not being able to fly in a straight line from one Geo stationary orbit to another

dylan6041y ago

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