![]() |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
|
#1
|
|||
|
|||
![]()
Does anyone have a citation for the idea of geo[or any other
primary]stationary orbit earlier than Tsiolkovsky? He gives the altitude for GEO and its counterparts for the sun and several other planets, in _Dreams of Earth and Sky_ in 1895, and in his notebooks some years earlier. I'm taking it for granted that anyone after Newton (Lagrange? Laplace?) could have worked out that there'd be one circular, equatorial orbit -- or more generally, a family of synchronous orbits -- for any rotating primary. But so far, no astronomer or historian of astronomy I've queried has come up with an earlier citation. My working hypothesis is that if anyone did notice it earler, it would have been dismissed as a trivial curiosity, since astronomy offered no natural example of a synchronous orbit as it does of tide-locked satellites... and by extension, that Tsiolkovsky was the first to call attention to it because he was starting to think about artificial satellites. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
![]() |
||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
[sci.astro] Solar System (Astronomy Frequently Asked Questions) (5/9) | [email protected] | Astronomy Misc | 0 | October 6th 05 02:36 AM |
LONEOS Discovers Asteroid with the Smallest Orbit (2004 JG6) | Ron | Misc | 1 | May 21st 04 11:29 PM |
New Solar System Model that explains DW 2004 / Quaoar / Kuiper Belt and Pluto | hermesnines | Misc | 0 | February 24th 04 08:49 PM |
Orbit for Hermes Dynamically Linked from 1937 to 2003 | Ron Baalke | Science | 0 | October 17th 03 02:03 AM |
Incontrovertible Evidence | Cash | Amateur Astronomy | 6 | August 24th 03 07:22 PM |