First to notice GEO?

Who was the first to notice the unique properties of geosynchronous
orbit? NOT potential uses for it, simply the coincidence of orbital
speed at a given radius, the equatorial plane, and the earth's
rotation beneath. I can't find anything before Tsiolkovsky in the
1880s, but that seems awfully late... Newton? Laplace?

-Monte Davis

Monte Davis wrote in
:

Who was the first to notice the unique properties of geosynchronous
orbit? NOT potential uses for it, simply the coincidence of orbital
speed at a given radius, the equatorial plane, and the earth's
rotation beneath. I can't find anything before Tsiolkovsky in the
1880s, but that seems awfully late... Newton? Laplace?

Arthur C. Clarke, the renowned science fiction writer, seems to
be getting some credit for it. (aka 'Clarke orbit')

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...arkeOrbit.html

--Damon

In message , Damon Hill
writes
Monte Davis wrote in
:

Who was the first to notice the unique properties of geosynchronous
orbit? NOT potential uses for it, simply the coincidence of orbital
speed at a given radius, the equatorial plane, and the earth's
rotation beneath. I can't find anything before Tsiolkovsky in the
1880s, but that seems awfully late... Newton? Laplace?

Arthur C. Clarke, the renowned science fiction writer, seems to
be getting some credit for it. (aka 'Clarke orbit')

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...arkeOrbit.html

Clarke credits Hermann Noordung (Captain H Potocnik) with the first
detailed description of a space station in stationary orbit, in 1928.He
says "Tsiolkovski took the concept for granted" and suggests that it
might have been discussed when Asaph Hall discovered the moons of Mars.
(This from his "Ascent to Orbit")
--
What have they got to hide? Release the ESA Beagle 2 report.
Remove spam and invalid from address to reply.

Jonathan Silverlight wrote
in news

Clarke credits Hermann Noordung (Captain H Potocnik) with the first
detailed description of a space station in stationary orbit, in 1928.He
says "Tsiolkovski took the concept for granted" and suggests that it
might have been discussed when Asaph Hall discovered the moons of Mars.
(This from his "Ascent to Orbit")

That sounds more likely, yes.

--Damon

"Monte Davis" wrote in message
...
Who was the first to notice the unique properties of geosynchronous
orbit? NOT potential uses for it, simply the coincidence of orbital
speed at a given radius, the equatorial plane, and the earth's
rotation beneath. I can't find anything before Tsiolkovsky in the
1880s, but that seems awfully late... Newton? Laplace?

-Monte Davis

Monte -

Arthur C. Clarke is credited with the first reference to geostationary
satellites -- from his letter to the editor titled Peacetime Uses for V2
published in the 1945 February issue of Wireless World (page 58).
http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/

This was followed by a privately circulated proposal in May 1945 titled The
Space-Station: Its Radio Applications in six typed manuscripts. The top copy
of that is now in the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington D.C.

The Future of World Communications written by Clarke in late June was
submitted to the RAF censor on July 7th, 1945. The article was sent to
Wireless World on August 13th and accepted on September 1st. The Wireless
World editor had changed the article's title to Extra-Terrestrial Relays and
published it in the 1945 October issue of Wireless World (pages 305-308).

Math for a geostationary orbit
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...naryOrbit.html

The foundation for the mathematical work (above) was established of the
17th and 18th century at the Academie des Sciences in Paris (and before the
French Revolution). IF any commentary on geostationary orbits before
Clarke's articles is ever found by future mathematical historians, it will
likely be in comments of the papers or journals of these scholars.
The orbits of Jupiter's moons were observed and provided ready data points
for the validation of orbital mechanic theories.

The 18th century works of Euler and Lagrange on the Three Body Problem would
be a natural starting point to look for commentary in earlier reference
works or Lagrange's later work with the stability of the solar system.
The Three Body Problem is the problem of investigating the behavior of three
mutually attracting bodies (such as the Sun, Earth and Moon) and the
stability of their motion.

g. beat

"Monte Davis" wrote in message
...
Who was the first to notice the unique properties of geosynchronous
orbit? NOT potential uses for it, simply the coincidence of orbital
speed at a given radius, the equatorial plane, and the earth's
rotation beneath. I can't find anything before Tsiolkovsky in the
1880s, but that seems awfully late... Newton? Laplace?

-Monte Davis

I do not know if works that followed Kepler's third law of planetary motion
.... made specific observations about the unique relationship of a
geostationary orbit.

g. beat

"w9gb" wrote
good stuff

Thank you -- very significant contributions,
and good manners. Stick around....

Jonathan Silverlight
wrote:

Clarke credits Hermann Noordung (Captain H Potocnik) with the first
detailed description of a space station in stationary orbit, in 1928.He
says "Tsiolkovski took the concept for granted" and suggests that it
might have been discussed when Asaph Hall discovered the moons of Mars.
(This from his "Ascent to Orbit")

Thanks, Jonathan. It's hard to establish a negative, but I'm beginning
to think synchronous orbits might have been dismissed as a curiosity
by mathematical physicists doing early celestial mechanics (after all,
a primary's rotation rate is arbitrary , and irrelevant in
center-of-mass calculations). Also, there was no natural example of
synchronous orbit, as there was of tide-locking with the Moon.

So perhaps no one gave it much thought until Tsiolkovsky focused on
*putting* things into orbit.

-Monte

Monte Davis wrote:

Thanks, Jonathan. It's hard to establish a negative, but I'm beginning
to think synchronous orbits might have been dismissed as a curiosity
by mathematical physicists doing early celestial mechanics (after all,
a primary's rotation rate is arbitrary , and irrelevant in
center-of-mass calculations). Also, there was no natural example of
synchronous orbit, as there was of tide-locking with the Moon.


Another thing that may have worked against early realization of the
orbit's uniqueness was Kepler's first law - if you think that all
natural orbits are in the form of an ellipse, then a circular true GEO
is harder to visualize.


So perhaps no one gave it much thought until Tsiolkovsky focused on
*putting* things into orbit.


That may have been the key...of course, Tsiolkovsky was a Russian- and
we all know that all significant scientific discoveries originated in
Russia...take Quadrotriticale grain for instance.... ;-)

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery writes:


Monte Davis wrote:

Thanks, Jonathan. It's hard to establish a negative, but I'm beginning
to think synchronous orbits might have been dismissed as a curiosity
by mathematical physicists doing early celestial mechanics (after all,
a primary's rotation rate is arbitrary , and irrelevant in
center-of-mass calculations). Also, there was no natural example of
synchronous orbit, as there was of tide-locking with the Moon.


Another thing that may have worked against early realization of the
orbit's uniqueness was Kepler's first law - if you think that all
natural orbits are in the form of an ellipse, then a circular true GEO
is harder to visualize.

Only if you don't consider a cirlce to be a special case of an ellipse.


So perhaps no one gave it much thought until Tsiolkovsky focused on
*putting* things into orbit.


That may have been the key...of course, Tsiolkovsky was a Russian- and
we all know that all significant scientific discoveries originated in
Russia...take Quadrotriticale grain for instance.... ;-)

And Scotch Whisky - it was invented by a little old lady in Leningrad.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster