starflight is the book about the moon being knocked out of orbit.
book about moon being knocked out of orbit?
starflight
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while the orbit of a satellite around the sun was empirically discovered by kepler and theoretically proven by newton to be an ellipse, at the time when the united states was interested in going to the moon, there was no such solution known for the shape of a satellite orbiting regularly around two objects, such as a spacecraft going between the earth and the moon. this is a special case of the infamous three-body problem, for which a general analytical solution is not known because of its complexity of solving the effect of three bodies which all pull on each other while moving, a total of six interactions. however the case of an earth-moon satellite can be simplified to four interactions, because although the three objects gravitationally all pull on each other, the effect of the spacecraft's gravity upon the motion of the vastly more massive earth and moon is practically non-existent. arenstorf found a stable orbit for a spacecraft orbiting between the earth and moon, shaped like an "8" with the earth or moon located inside each loop of the "8". this orbit is the basis of a path going to the moon from the earth, such as the united states apollo program. for a permanent presence on the moon, it would be the path of what arenstorf calls a "space bus", a ferry which could regularly orbit supplies and people between the earth and moon without directly expending fuel. by staying on the arenstorf orbit, lunar astronauts automatically return to earth. before leaving nasa at the first moon landing, arenstorf mapped out an emergency rescue orbit, which was used in the apollo 13 incident, in which a catastrophic malfunction forced aborting the moon landing, but the astronauts ultimately returned safely to earth without a major course adjustment.
richard arenstorf