An Interesting Orbit Pattern of an Astroid that Almost Hit Earth Several TImes (gif)

Here's a very interesting gif I stole from reddit of an astroid that almost hit earth and the moon several times before finally whiplashing out into space.



Thankfully no one strapped Delta V Engines onto that bad boy!

OK new goal for Uber we want to be able to do that.

Am I the only one who thought spirograph?

I thought it turned out to be derbies from the Saturn V rocket?

May have been. I only glanced at the additional info on reddit.

Just thought it was cool and pretty fitting in regards to what we do with our digital orbital bodies.

It's interesting how much the moon perterbs it's orbit. Though with PA's 2 body simulation, this wouldn't be possible.

Its an RTS and as such, you have to 'fake' some of the none rts stuff like orbits to keep your computer from melting.

i wonder if this is true but i have a hard time believing it is.
i can never find anything about it just by typing in JOO2E3 on youtube or google
strange.......................

Well the moon is actually pretty big.
There's more than a few people who think we should really consider it a binary planet with earth, I don't have the figures but I think if we found two exoplanets of equivalent size orbiting eachother we'd probably call them binary planets.

Just classic human self-importance making ourselves the centre of everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J002E3

For some reason I now have a burning urge to play Kerbal Space Program... JEB!! Get those boosters ready we have an asteroid to catch!!

Well, it isn't the computer that would choke on a full orbital simulation, it's the user. With the 2-body simulation, Uber can predict with a very high degree of precision and accuracy what the orbit of a celestial body will be; they can then display the orbits for the players to understand. However, with a full body simulation, predicting orbits is nearly impossible, and so Uber couldn't give the Astreus a realistic flight path through space, or set Asteroids on a slingshot around the sun before they crash into a planet. Of course, they could still do this outside the full orbital body simulation, but that makes the point of the simulation null and void.

While the moon is quite large, the difference in mass between the earth and the moon is significant (from wikipedia, the moon's mass is only 1.23% of the earth's) so the barycenter is well inside the earth. You could call it a double planet, but I wouldn't say that "human self-importance" is the main reason people wouldn't.

As far as orbital paths go, I do hope the system is overhauled. Interplanetary travel can take a very long time as it is, and the paths travelled can be shortened considerably.

I'd also like to see adjustable axial tilt and orbital planes, accurate use of gravity, and if we're lucky, maybe orbits calculated as 2 body problems.

Aah, so that's the technical definition. Now you say it I do remember hearing that, teaches me to do my research before posting!

Uber have promised a full orbital overhaul, including orbital factories (presumably implying basic and advanced orbital tiers) so I would wait till that comes out before getting too worried about how it's implemented; it may well change things such as travel time.

I don't think there is a widely accepted technical definition, honestly. If the moon were more distant, the barycenter would be outside of the earth. The sun/jupiter barycenter is outside of the sun as well IIRC. Classification in astronomy isn't always well defined it seems.

here's what I found on wikapidea

J002E3 is the designation given to a supposed asteroid discovered by amateur astronomer Bill Yeung on September 3, 2002. Further examination revealed that the surface appeared to contain the paint used on the Apollo moon rockets. The object is probably the S-IVB third stage of the Apollo 12 Saturn V rocket (serial S-IVB-507).[1][2]

But double planets are silly to talk about..

A double planet means that neither planet is orbiting the other, but spinning around a common point, and the system as a whole is in orbit around the sun.

Think about a binary star. Both stars orbit around the same point.

Really there is a single star, which takes up a large amount of volume. Most of the mass of the "star" is in two different places, which appear to be different stars and most of the volume of the sphere doesn't contain any mass. Plus the sphere rotates on its axis.

If you compare that to the sun, the mass of the sun is more or less evenly distributed throughout the "sphere", and most of the volume contains mass. And the sun rotates on its axis.

Jupiter clearly orbits the sun. Whereas, in a classic binary star system, "Jupiter" never orbits its parent star, they both orbit the same point.

Technically Jupiter is a star too, just of the wrong make-up to undergo fusion. If Jupiter was a star, but it was still in orbit around Sol, I don't think it would be a binary star system. It would just be a star in orbit around another star

Isn't one of the hypotheses for the center of the galaxy just an ultramassive star that everything else is orbiting?

The centre of our galaxy is a black hole named Sagittarius A*. My understanding of orbital mechanics would be that the smaller body will always orbit the larger, though as the difference in mass lessens, the pull of the lesser object will be closer and closer to orbiting a common point.

The problem is that true orbital mechanics are kinda bad for gameplay over a few hours if the game hasn't be set up properly to account for it.

True orbital mechanics are in no way feasible; 2 body calculations might be, however. If you're talking about planetary motion, I would have to disagree. I believe more realistic planetary interactions could have a beneficial effect on gameplay, especially when orbits can be altered with halleys (assuming different orbital paths and approaches will allow for more effective use of things like the unit cannon or interplanetary travel, and for avoiding invasions). This of course assumes that the interplanetary travel paths for units will be fixed up (so that you could travel between planets as they approach without sending your units an extra lap around the sun first).