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Gravity boost
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 Space Station Commander  
Joined: Mon May 31, 2004 9:47 pm
Posts: 743 Location: Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) - capital of Israel! 
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 Gravity boost Posted on: Wed Aug 19, 2009 1:04 pmHow does a planetary fly-by gravity boost increase velocity?
_________________ “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Leonardo Da Vinci |
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Space Walker  
Joined: Thu May 07, 2009 2:40 am
Posts: 147 Location: Austin, Texas
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Re: Gravity boost Posted on: Wed Aug 19, 2009 3:02 pm The spacecraft effectively "bounces" off of the planet, similar to the way a rubber ball would bounce off of a speeding car as it passes by. The car transfers its velocity to the rubber ball. Of course, the spacecraft doesn't actually bounce off of the planet, but it whips around it in a hyperbolic trajectory. Check Wikipedia for a more detailed description of how this works.
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Space Station Member  
Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 6:16 pm
Posts: 314
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Re: Gravity boost Posted on: Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:19 pm Which type are you talking about? Powered or unpowered? In a powered flyby, the craft dives towards the object, adding velocity, before executing a burn when it is travelling close to the escape velocity of the object, rasing it's velocity high enough to escape. Since the energy of an object goes as the square root of velocity, the craft gains more energy than it would have if it had just executed the burn without the flyby, since it hjas the energy from the dive.
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