Orbit around a square planet.

I, too, have enjoyed this discussion!
Thanks, all participants!

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I, too, have enjoyed this discussion!
Thanks, all participants!

Hey, SOMEONE has to imagine the weird stuff🙂
I think in light of the fact that the earth has mascons that effect the orbit of satellites, making the orbital path deviate from a nice clean ellipse, then I think it safe to make the analogy of the cubical planet just being a case of a planet with extreme mascons and an orbit rather squarelike would happen, with rounded corners, like maybe 4 elipticals glued together. Too bad we don't have drawing capability, a single drawing would stand in for a lot of typing!
Ok, another weirdism: Suppose we land on this cubical planet and find the surface gravity is just at one earth G. So we build a road on this airless world from one face of the cube to another. Under these conditions, can you drive into orbit? And would it make a difference if the road was built corner to corner or face to face?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Hey, SOMEONE has to imagine the weird stuff🙂
I think in light of the fact that the earth has mascons that effect the orbit of satellites, making the orbital path deviate from a nice clean ellipse, then I think it safe to make the analogy of the cubical planet just being a case of a planet with extreme mascons and an orbit rather squarelike would happen, o orbit? And would it make a difference if the road was built corner to corner or face to face?

Did anyone determine how high up and how fast an orbit would need to be?

Originally posted by sonhouse
... Too bad we don't have drawing capability, a single drawing would stand in for a lot of typing!

doesn't anybody have mathcad installed? it would be very easy to draw the gravity field: aproximate the local space with a, say, 1000x1000x1000 grid. approximate the planet with 150x150x150 grid in the middle of the local space. set all points in the 'planet grid' to a suitable mass. loop all points in local space, and for each point, loop through the 'planet grid' and add together the potential vectors caused by individual planet points. and voilà, you have the potential field in a 1000x1000x1000 grid. then you just plot any plane you like.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Suppose we land on this cubical planet and find the surface gravity is just at one earth G. So we build a road on this airless world from one face of the cube to another. Under these conditions, can you drive into orbit?

Into orbit? A closed orbit? No.
In any orbit? You will either crash a half an orbit later, or leave the gravitational pull altogether.

Suppose you dirve a monster car upwards Mount Everest in a speed higher than the excape velocity in elevation, 11 m/s. When you leave the summit of the top, then you will go ballistic. Either you will leav the earths gravitation, or you will crash, at least half an orbit later.

That's my theory.

Do we really talk about 'orbit' if it's not closed and stable?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Into orbit? A closed orbit? No.
In any orbit? You will either crash a half an orbit later, or leave the gravitational pull altogether.

Suppose you dirve a monster car upwards Mount Everest in a speed higher than the excape velocity in elevation, 11 m/s. When you leave the summit of the top, then you will go ballistic. Either you will leav the earths g ...[text shortened]... ater.

That's my theory.

Do we really talk about 'orbit' if it's not closed and stable?

The idea is just like the maglev ramp designed for launching from the moon, it can easily boost to lunar orbital speed, it's just a matter of getting the velocity right, obviously with a ramp you can attain any velocity you want if you can take a thousand G's or so, within the limits of inorganic launches.
But to get into orbit, the velocity would have to be fine tuned. Maybe it would require a correction with a rocket after you have left the ground, just enough to ensure some form of elliptical shape or in the case of the cubical planet, a four lobed ellipse, but it seems clear you could drive off the cubic face since it would be like you say, driving up mount Everest except the road would be thousands of Km long. I think you meant to say 11 Kilometers per second, not 11 meters per second, right?

Originally posted by sonhouse
The idea is just like the maglev ramp designed for launching from the moon, it can easily boost to lunar orbital speed, it's just a matter of getting the velocity right, obviously with a ramp you can attain any velocity you want if you can take a thousand G's or so, within the limits of inorganic launches.
But to get into orbit, the velocity would have to ...[text shortened]... f Km long. I think you meant to say 11 Kilometers per second, not 11 meters per second, right?

"I think you meant to say 11 Kilometers per second, not 11 meters per second, right?" Right. Thank you for the correction.

If we think of a spherical planet in order not to complicate things more than needed, we not only 'may' have another rocket boost in apogeum, we 'must' have it. The reason is that any oclosed orbit around a planet is elliptical. And this ellips cut the spherical form of the planet at two places: One 'up' at your launch site and one 'down' that will be the crash site. Therefore we must change the orbital parameters once more in this elliptical orbit, and that will be at the apogeum.

Back to the qubic planet for a while. Some funny phenomenon occurs at such a planet.

How far is it to the horizon? To the edge, and no further. But even when you are in the middle of a plane, you feel that you are in a middle of a bowl. Only there you can stand exactly straight up. The further you go to the horizon the more you have to lean forward. Even when it seems to be a plain, the gravitational pull doesn't drag you exactly down perpendicular to the ground. It feels uphill in any direction from the center.

The corners of the qube will feel as a mountain tops. And from any top you can see to three of the other tops/corners far away.

The atmosphere is collected to the middle of the plains. Perhaps you cannot even breath at the corners, nor even the edges, depends of how thick the atmosphere is, of course. But think of how thick our own atmosphere is? You cannot breath even at the top of Mt Everest comfortably, and Mt Everest is not very high compared to the corners of a qubic planet.

If there is oceans on this qubic planet, they would be situated at six places, and they are perfectly round oceans, deepest in the middle.

But is qubic planets really realistic? I think they would melt down to a sphere rather qhick, with the aid of gravitation. Earth could easily concidered as a molten drop of magma and lava with a very thin crust of rock were we live. We have tectonics like a squared planet cannot have only because our crust is so thin.

Then I think of the Borg's...

Originally posted by FabianFnas
"I think you meant to say 11 Kilometers per second, not 11 meters per second, right?" Right. Thank you for the correction.

If we think of a spherical planet in order not to complicate things more than needed, we not only 'may' have another rocket boost in apogeum, we 'must' have it. The reason is that any oclosed orbit around a planet is elliptical. An ...[text shortened]... anet cannot have only because our crust is so thin.

Then I think of the Borg's...

Ah, but our planet is engineered. Made out of one bigass diamond with heat removing features that keeps the internal heating to a minimum, also because it is engineered, there are no radioactives inside to generate heat. It also gives the inhabitants an easy way to have communications, each corner of the cube has a high antenna sticking out so you can have communications better than satellites, the signal does not have to go as far and therefore the signal to noise ratio is always better since every signal from a peak to the valley will be line of sight. Also since the faces are flat, there is a gravitational gradient built in to the place so they build an evacuated tunnel and you get free transportation from one peak to another on a straight road! You start out going downhill and reaching the center of the face you start back uphill and so you end up at zero velocity where the trip ends. You can see tunnels that would have exact lengths so you begin and end with zero velocity at any of a large number of destinations around the face of a given side. No oil dependency here!

Originally posted by FabianFnas
Into orbit? A closed orbit? No.
In any orbit? You will either crash a half an orbit later, or leave the gravitational pull altogether.

Suppose you dirve a monster car upwards Mount Everest in a speed higher than the excape velocity in elevation, 11 m/s. When you leave the summit of the top, then you will go ballistic. Either you will leav the earths g ...[text shortened]... ater.

That's my theory.

Do we really talk about 'orbit' if it's not closed and stable?

If you carefully calculate, you should be able to arrange a roughly stable orbit - assuming it's possible to go fast enough.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Ah, but our planet is engineered. Made out of one bigass diamond with heat removing features that keeps the internal heating to a minimum, also because it is engineered, there are no radioactives inside to generate heat. It also gives the inhabitants an easy way to have communications, each corner of the cube has a high antenna sticking out so you can have ...[text shortened]... t any of a large number of destinations around the face of a given side. No oil dependency here!

Don't forget about friction!

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
If you carefully calculate, you should be able to arrange a roughly stable orbit - assuming it's possible to go fast enough.

No, it's not possible of the reason I mentioned in my last posting.

Originally posted by FabianFnas
No, it's not possible of the reason I mentioned in my last posting.

Well, at least there could be a sort of half orbit where the car gently lands on the other side and can then easily go off the other side and land on the original.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Well, at least there could be a sort of half orbit where the car gently lands on the other side and can then easily go off the other side and land on the original.

Methinks our fabled cubical planet would have to have very tight specs on the distances, no errors allowed, totally symmetrical and all that. Kind of the Evil Knievel of the space crowd. I wonder how much the TV networks would pay for that stunt?
Anyway, if you had supplemental rockets you could undoubtedly get into orbit, my conjectured rounded square shaped one. The energy needed for that job would of course only be a small fraction of the energy needed to launch from a ramp so it could be a small hydrogen peroxide job or something similar, a few hundred feet per second delta V max.
BTW, in our magical transportation system, magnetic tracks would pretty much take care of friction, although not completely, so there would be a small energy kick into the magnetic field to compensate, nowhere near like the amount of energy needed to keep a high mass train at some velocity for the whole trip, I am guessing less than one percent of that kind of energy needed, a simple matter for a first year physics student.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Methinks our fabled cubical planet would have to have very tight specs on the distances, no errors allowed, totally symmetrical and all that. Kind of the Evil Knievel of the space crowd. I wonder how much the TV networks would pay for that stunt?
Anyway, if you had supplemental rockets you could undoubtedly get into orbit, my conjectured rounded square sha ...[text shortened]... han one percent of that kind of energy needed, a simple matter for a first year physics student.

What we are talking about is to lift the orbital energy from an elliptical orbit into a circular one. Methinks that one needs conciderably more than just a small hydrogen peroxide job or something similar. Methinks you have a rocket of conciderate power to rasie the orbital energy in order to get the thin into circular orbit.

I don't know where my book in astronatuics is for the moment, but there I could find the formulas needed to calculate the energy needed.

"Methinks"? I think I've just learned a new English expression! Thank you sonhouse! 😵

Originally posted by FabianFnas
What we are talking about is to lift the orbital energy from an elliptical orbit into a circular one. Methinks that one needs conciderably more than just a small hydrogen peroxide job or something similar. Methinks you have a rocket of conciderate power to rasie the orbital energy in order to get the thin into circular orbit. Don't forget, when you visual ...[text shortened]...

"Methinks"? I think I've just learned a new English expression! Thank you sonhouse! 😵

Methinks thee protesteth too much🙂
Anyway, friendly bet: it doesn't take more than 10% of the energy required to get into an orbit from the ground in a rocket vs our car driving off a big ass cliff (the corner) from whatever orbital it would assume from there to a circular orbit.
Anyway, it looks to me like, if you chart the possible routes our intrepid car would take in terms of velocity, that is to say, look at all the possible curves resulting from charging up the big hill at various speeds. You have a ramp thousands of Km long and you can accelerate at a good clip considering you are not on a circular road like our driving off the moon problem, so going up a ramp like that would mean you could be doing 0.1 G, 0.5 G, 1.0 G, 2 G's, 2.01 G's, etc., any of an infinite number of curves could result from those differant accel rates. I bet if you could plug them into a good simulator, you would find a curve that would leave you in a stable orbit. For instance, I think it entirely possible, given our circumstances, a long, what, 8,000 Km long ramp (just a guess at what one face would be across) but suppose that was the number, you could have a car doing say, 3 G's and by the time you got to the end of the run, you would exceed escape velocity so if you looked at accel rates under the minimum needed for escape, you would have an infinite number of curves as a result. I am just visualizing the possibilities, not seeing any one solution of course, but you must see what I mean here, there must be on one of those curves, a ride to orbit. We would have to have a good software simulator to show that though. Would it be easier to simulate the orbital mechanics if we imagined a spherical airless planet the size of earth with some kind of ramp at say, 45 degrees, which of course is just one of an infinite number of angles, but suppose you go with 45 degrees just for kicks, then make our ramp say 8,000 km long, (minor engineering problem🙂 and considering you would be in effect always going uphill you can achieve very high accel rates without much difficulty and therefore could easily get way past escape velocity, so under those circumstances, it seems some velocity just under escape will put you into a high perigee elliptical orbit. It seems it would have to.
Of course I have not done the simulation except in my head but my head is screaming at me that would be the case. I am seeing an infinite number of possible curves from crashing very close to the ramp to some orbital to escape and beyond, all having some form of parabola, ellipse or hyperbolic, depending on the velocity achieved at the end of the ramp.