Originally posted by leisurelysloth
It seems to me that the simplest "orbit" would be sitting stationary in the center of the torus, and very close (in terms of simplicity) is just oscillating back and forth in a straight line in the center of the torus. My gut feel, without doing a speck of calculating, is the neither of these is stable--any perturbation towards the torus would result ...[text shortened]... chronized with a rotation of the torus--I suspect there would be some interesting solutions.
If the torous was rotating around its equator, like a spinning top, the orbiting satellite would not be much effected. However, if the torous was spinning end over end, that would make any orbit throgh the loop almost impossible. If there was an object in the center of the torous and at an equal gravity point, flipping end over end wouldn't matter nor would spinning matter, since the zero gravity point would stay in the same place in either case unless it was a relativistic rotation, fully damming all laws of phyics, but that aside, there could be frame dragging effects then, but the center point should still be stable.
