Can An Astronaut Orbit The Space Station?
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- The space station masses over 400 tons, so can an astronaut orbit this? And what does this question have to do with supernova?
We can use Universe Sandbox 2 to simulate how the forces of gravity work down to small scales, but also how they interact in more complcated ways than most people imagine.
universesandbox...
Maybe if my mother in law was onboard, HEY-OOOOOOOOOOOOO
That joke is overused and ancient. Just like your mother in law.
Get over your PC ass.
so savage
Peter Rabitt if I wanted to orbit something I'd go to my mother in laws house
PC? Do you have any fucking idea what politically correct is? Dumb ass.
But, can the space station orbit the astronaut?
It depends on how fat the astronaut is...
HAHAHAHA That sounded rly funny
Maybe if they're American.
Technically both objects are orbiting each other, it's just the difference in mass is so significant that you don't notice it. Objects orbit around their center of mass.
In Soviet Russia, space station orbits you!
This is a beautiful representation of how the laws of physics don't care about scale. Whether we are using a bowling ball and some dice as objects or planets and moons, as long as their relative scales are the same, we will get the same gravitational effects. That's very cool.
Yo so I can make my own solar system around the earth that’s awesome
You can fake it.
Put the astronaut in an orbit with the same period as the station, but with a different eccentricity, and a perigee directly below the station.
From the point of view of the station, he'll follow a non-circular trajectory around it. First gaining on the station, then rising east of it, then falling behind above, then dropping below it, then overtaking the station as it returns to the starting point.
Yes, this is what they do to fly two satellites in formation close to each other. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X is an example.
You could tell by the period of the orbit, although I bet there is a distance where they are equal.
If you tilt two spherical orbits, they will fall to eachother. If you put a rod between them, you got artificial gravity.
WOW~ Dear Scott, I've been watching your videos every week for the last `5 years, though I don't think that I've left a comment, yet. I want to thank you sincerely for what you do. No one else on the internet presents this kind of information in such a thoughtful and entertaining way.
I found your channel simply needing tips in an early version of KSP, and then, almost as if by fate, you introduce me to Elite: Dangerous. Now I'm just a humble pizza maker and it took me a while to save for everything I needed for my own VR spaceship. It is a dream come true and I can't thank you enough. Cheers from Colorado!
I agree! This was my favorite video :)
Kudos to Scott,. However, you may also like the style and equally excellent content of Curious Droid.
Can an astronaut orbit another astronaut?
+LTrotsky 21st Century if they're not near the earth
So the "Yo mama so fat she has her own orbit" joke has always been (potentially) true, but it's regardless of my mother's actual girth? Huh.
LTrotsky 21st Century
Unless one is much more massive than the other, I suspect it would be more of a binary system because the orbital axis would be between them instead of inside one of them.
That's what I'm thinking
Only if one is fatter than another.
A million likes for utterly diverting diversions. From orbiting the ISS in orbit to calculating the distance of galaxies, good work sir!
Scott, ever since I first started watching your videos back in 2013, you've never ceased to amaze me with your knowledge and understanding. Thank you so much for all of the content and laughs.
Cheers
You called?
Osmium You're so dense.
Every single atom has so much going on......
No its not Scott it's a hacker
Yeah, but a bit above you in the comments we've established "Mothers in Law" (chemical element: ML) is/are denser! Your services are no longer required. Sorry ;P
@@maryamkaita2529 wtf
This is now officially one of my favourite videos about space.
This reminds me of the Family Guy episode where Peter had an apple orbiting him.
Also pens and cups lol
+Black Ursus József The TV aswell
it seems to me that an apple should orbit _inside_ the space-station, if placed near the station's center-of-mass. Then if an astronaut stayed centered at that point, the apple would seem to be mysteriously orbiting him, or her.
It would be so simple to set up and do, it would make a good educational gravity experiment/demonstration.
@@-danR Yeah, but you need to remove air. otherwise it will "deorbit".
@@-danR it doesn't work like that. The walls would pull it away from the center of mass.
the music was so lovely
I'm interested in knowing the music at 5:57!
Don't think it has been posted separately yet but it's a part of the newer soundtrack of Universe Sandbox 2, I like it too
*****
That would certainly make sense, but i can't seem to find the soundtrack if it was that. Some of it has the same style, but can't find the specific track... Ohh well.
It's from Universe Sandbox 2. It's quite sad when you are playing the game
gahh... if i only had a teacher like scott when i grew up...
Edvard Hansson you’d be able to finish a statement?
Hmm, but what if astronaut's orbit was in a different plane - perpendicular to the line to the centre of Earth (that line would be then be the axis of orbit's ring or a ceterpoint of ellipse), thus being almost at the same distance from Earth in an attempt to cancel out the effects of tidal forces?
The astronauts orbit can only be perpendicular at exactly two spots. Check out this picture I drew in MSPaint. It's a top down view (imagine looking down from one of the poles). Black circle is the Earth, red circle is the ISS and green line is the orbit of the astronaut.
i.imgur.com/3hfSmt5.png
I love your videos! I could watch these types of vids all day
Oh Scott, you always seem to lighten up my day with science projects and such. Thanks for the explanation!
This touches on a question me and my friends have argued over for years:
If I, an average adult male human, was in empty space, would a cheerio orbit me?
I say yes it would, others say no way, but looking at the bowling ball and the dice I'm pretty sure I'm right
If anyone has any answer please reply :)
+Scott Asquith you would be right assuming you weren't too near the earth.
Arsequeef I did a ruff estimate. Assuming the bowling ball was an average of 15 pounds, and an average weight for a human I guess would be 150 pounds. The human is there fore about 10 times more massive, and therefore takes 10x less time to orbit one. If it took 24 hours to orbit the bowling ball then it should take only 2.4 hours for a cheerio to orbit a human
Of course it could.
Could you imagine a rule in physics that said, "and this is how gravity works...unless it is a Cheerio! In that case all physics is different"
It depends what you even mean by empty space, as no space is actually empty. But anyway, you question should be, "assuming no other close gravitational forces..." then yes, why not? Actually you (the human) are also orbiting the cheerio. You both orbit the centre of mass between yourself and the cheerio. This is how it works. Its gravity.
@@andrewparker318 no that's not how it works. If you have no idea about orbital mechanics don't try to explain it. If the distance stays the same, the period is proportional to 1/sqrt(M) and not 1/M.
you are probably my fave youtuber, others are just too focused on making things shiny that they can take away from the content itself. Cheers, and have a good Christmas Scott!
This was like taking my college astronomy course all over again. The terminology is so familiar, but the equations.... Well not so much
Enjoyed watching this while having my morning coffee. Thankyou scott.
TLDR: In theory yes, but would have to be in open space. Low Earth Orbit is impossible since the Earth's gravity dominated everything that close. Heck, at that altitude the atmosphere is still a measurable force that the ISS has to occasionally correct for.
OtakuMage You do know that TLDR means, right?
OtakuMage Do you know what TL;DR means.
I guess, we can say that it's TL;DW, huh?
8m video -> 3 lines of text
Seemed appropriately TL;DR to me.
I want to see the bowling ball & marble orbit actually work in space.
I was thinking it was impossible because there's some very small air resistance where the ISS is orbiting.
Anyway, I was hoping the video was about to continue onto another tangent, about standard candles, but then it ended. Too bad. Have to wait for the next video.
I really appreciate that you gave us so much more information than we asked for, unlike other channels which do the reverse.
And here we have a simple 6-side die orbiting a bowling ball :DD
I initially thought that this would be pretty obvious but I'm surprised by how interesting it got. Thanks for the great video!
I already knew all this (the important bits, anyway), I just watched it to hear Scott's manly soothing voice.
Did you even do the math on a bowling ball made of Osmium?
Scott Manley I didn't do that, but to me that falls into the less important bits, just an interesting detail. To me the most important point is the concept of the Hill sphere and how multiple objects interact gravitationally in general.
I read one time something along the lines of "walking your dog the gravity of Saturn has a greater influence than the gravity of the dog." It it's true that's a pretty profound statement about mass and gravity fields.
However hugging your great dane while saturn is at it's farthest from earth the dogs gravity will be larger/the same.
With enough thrust and fuel I can orbit anything... Except close to extremely dense objects or people.
In Orbiter they did something similar with a 'fake orbit' scenario around Mars. You were in an orbit slightly more eccentric than your craft's, so you would appear to accelerate beneath the craft, drift upward, move above and fall behind it, and circle back down, with the caveat being it was all with the same period as the larger orbit. Really neat.
what if the astronaut orbit was perpendicular to that of that space stations orbit, a polar orbit around the space station. that would dramatically reduce the change in distance form the earth during the orbit.
i thought about it a bit and came to the conclusion that it's not true because as the station would orbit, the relative position of the earth would change, but the polar orbit would not. so at one points it would be fine, but as soon as you advanced 90 degrees in your orbit, you would be in the same situation as any other orbit.
But what if it progresses to change the orientation of the orbit so it always remains equidistant to the Earth? :p
That isn't possible, unless you're constantly thrusting to change the plane of your orbit.
Please do more Universe Sim content. I always find myself staring at the simulator thinking "what can I do with this" and after some interesting thoughts, end up smashing the moon into the earth again. I'd really like to see what someone with your astronomical knowledge can make of this simulation program.
The real question is, can the space station orbit the earth
Doesn't it?
Of course not, we all know the Earth is a flat disc resting on 4 elephants who are carried by a giant turtle.
Photonic Pizza Man, how could I forget that!
Lord Fuckface MacCumguzzlington von Cuckedfield-san don't belive theese lies: floating point math will eventualy make enought approximations and pull the station back to earth, did you forgot we are in the matrix already?
It's a 1-in-a-million change that it works. That means it will definetely work.
That blows me away that someone figured this stuff out hundreds of years ago. :)
I really like this KSP and space shit but then I hear, semi major access, multiply by cube root divided by primary divided by 3, hell sphere, gravity well, patched conic approximation, raise to power of 2/5, hill sphere, climb up side of gravity well, and so many damned nouns I never know which noun we are talking about at any given moment.
Axis, not access.
Remember, Google and Simple Wikipedia are your friends.
Very cool demo. Enjoyed the question, wasn't expecting that thorough an answer. Thx.
So if we all generate gravity and everything's attracted by gravity
Why is no one attracted to me?
If you're white, white people usually get less women cause they have WHITE HOLES ok I'll go now
Got a girlfriend/boyfriend after 2 years of writing this comment?
Ilić Dimitrije no :(
@@ryanm.191 * sigh * me neither.
for gravity you need mass
get thicc
loving these types of videos Scott! studying physics/astronomy myself next semester and really enjoy these!
how about an orbital plane parallel to the earth?
Yeah, that's what I am thinking too!
It is worthy to note that with a slight relative difference to eccentricity and inclination one can set up a pseudo-orbit. I've done that with Phobos, Deimos, and various space stations in Orbiter, although I'd expect it to only work over a short period.
2:25 what if the orbits were parallel to the ground below?
It's sad that no one will notice my comment that might be a good questions. 😞
I first though the same.. But then I found the fact that the orbit will never ALWAYS be parallel to the ground. Remember : the ISS is orbiting earth. If you are parallel to ground at some point, 1/4 of orbit later and you are perpandicular to ground... Then parallel again at the opposite side, then perpandicular again at 3/4 orbith...
kinda, but the earth is bumpy and not perfectly spherical, so having the curve of the orbit be parralell to the curve of earth's surface is impossible
This latest series of highly education focused videos with the programs like Kerbal or this Universe Sandbox 2 to give a visual have been awesome! I love the casual, just chatting Scott Manley and need my SpaceX updates and predictions from you still but these are awesome! Please keep this kind of video coming!
So the answer is no? No matter what it's no, unless if the building what extremely dense. Is this correct?
If the ISS was far enough away from the earth, you could orbit it. Where it hangs out now, however, nope.
damstachizz
Ya I was able to get that with the station being super close to earth, the earth out does the station.
But if the station and you were the only things in the universe. I'm wondering will you orbit it. I think this is why most came here
(I feel most people who watches his content is smart enough to have a basic understanding of orbital mechanics, and gravity)
If the only two non-negligible objects are you and the space station, then yes, you could orbit it. In fact, anything could orbit anything else (or the common barycenter) given proper conditions
I feel like this is entry level education material for Dr Who companions. One quick binge of Scott Manley and I feel ready to pilot the TARDIS.
What if the astronauts carried a rare-earth magnet with them at all times? And whenever they wanted to float back the ISS could activate an electromagnet?
MrHSX Cables and thrusters don't propagate currents through electronics.
Then everything would stick to the electromagnet including the astronaut.
magnetism dramatically falls of the further away you get from the source. So no it would not work; rare earth or electromagnet.
This goes the same for gravity, though, with a hefty pair of electromagnets you'd probably to get some sort orbit. The downside is that you'd probably attract a lot of unwanted space junk too.
Magnetism has a falloff rate follows a 1/d^3 curve all the way up to a 1/d^5 curve, where d is distance, so yeah, it has a significantly quicker falloff than gravity.
It's also much much stronger than gravity, so who knows, maybe it'd be able to orbit using magnetism, yeah. :)
Wow, Scott. You have out done yourself. FANTASTIC VIDEO.
I learned about the Roche limit from a Daft Punk song
Best comment of the day
So the questions that didn't get answered here that I'm still asking are:
How far out does the ISS have to be from earth for its Hill Shere to be outside of its physical size?
What would be the closest stable orbit and orbital period for an astronaut when that happens?
Despite these questions, I still loved the video!
Someone should release a craft into space that can set some balls into their own orbiting system and film it.
Sci-Fi Hooligan it won't be very exciting tho, since each orbit takes days to complete, it will move so slow that you can hardly recognize.
Just speed the recording up on playback.
It seems like the hard part would be imparting the correct orbital velocity... if you're dealing with something like 0.001m/s that would be incredibly difficult to achieve with small masses, you'd have to start accounting for things like the pressure exerted by light reflecting off the objects.
closest thing i've seen to that is the experiment on the ISS where they made water droplets orbit around a knitting needle due to static electricity. Not the exact same effect, but visually impressive.
plus your camera would affect the gravity of the orbits
Thank you Scott for all your work! You have really piqued and helped sustain my interest in everything space, physics and science. Really enjoy these exploration and explanation of concept videos. As well as your things KSP doesn't teach videos. I don't know how you get the time with your busy job! Anyway, your passion, seemingly inexhaustible depth of knowledge and clarity of explanation always leaves me satisfied and with an appetite for more. It makes me very pleased to think that there is a quite a number of people that feel the same as I do, who would not otherwise be as interested or enlightened in these areas as they otherwise would be.
Thanks! :)
Is there a part gravity mod for ksp?
Need an N-body mod before that.
There _is_ an N-body mod. I think Scott did a video on it.
_Principia_! How have I never heard of this? LAGRANGE POINTS HERE I COME
Timothy McLean Do you know how to install it because I really want it but there is no way that tells me.
Ethan Roberts Reading through the forum post let me quickly find this: github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/wiki/Installing,-reporting-bugs,-and-frequently-asked-questions
Wonderful explanation. ;)
Just a note about black holes ripping you apart--that depends on the size of the black holes. Very large ones (like I think the ones at centres of galaxies) have very weak tidal forces, so you could fall in without even realizing it.
Yes? (If the XKCD comic is anything to go by, it suggested that 2 swallows in space would collide after a few miles "flight" due to their own gravity. :P )
[Edit... so I was almost right, if the Astronaut gives it a push to a higher orbit first... lets go get some elbow grease and a space suit and we can give it a go!)
Colliding is different than orbiting.
We need a fulcrum and a very long lever.
And we also need to ignore material strength.. You know, that "deflection" thingy..
*****
Maybe another planet much larger than Earth, and ignoring all the side it would have to add an massive object near the Earth.. And ignoring material strength also..
Awesome!
Lots of gravity physics gathered into one with easy words.
Please keep up the good work.
If i drop my beer in space will it orbit me till i can get it?
I don't know if it's a good idea to drink a beer after exposing it to the vacuum of space :/
Narr it would be fine not even cold but the bottle may pop
+Joshua the Coder yeah, it would probably go flat before you could finish it :(
Joshua the Coder It would be completely safe to drink, but if it spills in space it could be hard to get it back in. Then again, the 5 second rule is a bit longer in space than on earth
Well this is an interesting coincidence, I've just been doing a project on the 3-body problem, and the way that small orbits are perturbed by both bodies being in orbit around a much larger third body, and then I see that you've done a video on the same kind of problem. :D
"A mysterious police box" I hope you're joking.
He is obviously.
It is however possible for the astronaut to appear as though it orbits the space station, even though really both of them or just in slightly different orbits about Earth. Considering the ISS in a circular orbit, there are slightly elliptical orbits about Earth for the astronaut to take that project a relative circular orbit about the space station.
(I can not quickly find an online source but I learned about this at my Astrodynamics M.Sc. course.)
Imagine the astronaut in an orbit with the same orbital period (i.e. semi-major axis) as the ISS but starting just below the ISS. The astronaut will then pull ahead first, cross the ISS' path just ahead of it, climb a little above the ISS and then fall behind it, etc. In the same orbital plane, this yields an elliptical orbit. If we change the orbital plane slightly, we add a sinusoidal component to the relative distance between the astronaut and the ISS, which if in the right phase may make their relative orbits appear circular.
It's "a die" - dice is plural :p
"dice" is also singular; look it up.
Scott i love your channel how you both play games and teach science in a fun and educational way. I stopped playing KSP a while ago, but im still subscribed because of this. Thankyou
It's "a die", not "a dice". /pedantry
Ed T. NecroBones clearly the singular is "douse".
Incorrect; look it up.
Ed T. NecroBones DEECE YOU IDIOTS
Alexander Roderick Like the plural of "house" is "hice", right?
Polygeese
I downloaded Universe Sandbox music a few years back. It's beautiful!
Its called a Tardis
Freeky napoleon **sighs**
Nope it's called. TARDIS It's an acronym so.. All caps. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space
Do you know what that loud whooooooooshing sound was?
@@stargazer7644 The mysterious police box flying overhead?
When I first saw the title of this, I thought you would be talking about the astronaut circumnavigating the ISS. But that is just the astronaut orbiting the earth with a relative trajectory that moves him/her around the ISS (in a 2x1 ratio for a natural motion circumnav). The shuttle did this often, I believe. That is how we got such great photos of the ISS.
Yep, the shuttle was actively moving rather than being pulled by the gravity of the station
Nope, literally impossible. The gravity is out dominated by earths...
But in empty space tho...
It's not the magnitude of the gravity that matters though.
you cant orbit another body while in earths sphere of influence, silly manley /s
Well so what is with the moon orbiting earth while in the suns sphere of influence?
The moon is inside the earth's sphere of influence and yet you can orbit the moon.
Scott Manley True, but since the size of the ISS is so small, and the earths gravity well is so big. Its near to impossible to orbit it, but nothing is impossible.
amazing video scott, also I love how this opens the possibility for miniature planets with miniature moons and things on there thinking they are all big...
I'm speechless....the music :O
7:37 - Nitpick: for a carbon-oxygen white dwarf (the most common kind, and the kind that generally cause type 1a supernovae), the supernovation happens at a mass very slightly _below_ the Chandrasekhar limit. The Chandrasekhar limit is actually the mass beyond which the white dwarf would collapse into a neutron star.
This avoided what I thought it was going to mention, which was that an astronaut with an orbit of the same period as the ISS but a slightly different eccentricity could find themselves (from the ISS PoV) cyclically dropping below, overtaking, rising up in front, being overtaken, etc, thereby appearing to "orbit" the station.
It is possible to choose two orbits around the Earth that stay close to each other, what they call formation flying. One famous example is the two DLR satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, radar satellites that stay close to each other to acquire data together. The DLR chooses different distances at different times, but they have been as close as a few hundred meters apart. The two satellites are not kept together by their mutual gravity, just by choosing the Earth orbits carefully so that they have the same average distance but slightly different ellipticity.
Nice video. I am a fan of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator so I know all about it.
I now how separate objects automatically fly in different directions when being in LEO. So I already guessed that the answer would be that it's impossible to orbit the ISS in reality before I watched the video.
For the same reason it's totally impossible to have any stable orbit around Phobos or even around Deimos. The gravitational field of Mars is simply to large.
Another thing to notice is that orbiting objects experience rotational effects because of the tidal effects. This is the "Gravity-gradient torque" thing that can be enabled in the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator to demonstrate it.
Another fascinating video, thanks Scott. Keep up the great work.
I like these type videos best, Scott. Very very interesting and thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the video Scott, I dare to say this has been one of your most informative videos to date.
Gravity isn't our only factor. Once, during an undocking sequence in SFS, I discovered my vessels had appeared to be orbiting each other before slowly drifting apart. The reason this happened, as far as I can tell, is that the bodies had very similar orbits and extremely low orbital velocities. Because of the direction they were separated, essentially boosting one directly "up" from the surface of Earth, their orbits were very slightly offset. Sometimes one would be in a higher orbit to the side, before reversing sides in a lower orbit. Thus, they appeared to travel in a circle. I'm sure the crew were interested in this illusion before they went for mars.
Very informative. Consider making an educational series on orbital mechanics.
Osmium actually isn't the densest material known. Technically the transuranic elements past lawrencium are absurdly dense, upwards of 42 grams/cubic centimeter for element 108, but they're of course radioactive with a half-life of 10 seconds or less.
Difficult to keep that solid since the radiation will boil it.
More of these, please.
I love how so many different things get connected together and make absolute sense in orbital mechanics yet having a 3 body problem in orbital mechanics is absolute insanity and still not completely understood, honestly rocket science, orbital mechanics, the theory of relativity, and quantum forces are all understood at the fundamental level and yet so misunderstood in the large scale of things, physics is a thing of beauty
Excellent transition to astronomical candles! Long live Scott Manley ^__^
Amazing lecture. I liked the music , it made things relaxing.
Lagrange points are interesting, i wonder if there are any astroids etc trapped in them.
Very interesting video Scott :)
So, I did some back of the envelope maths, and if you were to place the ISS outside of these tidal influences you'd need to have a velocity of 0.483 mm/s is you orbit it at 120 meters. It is 108 meters at it's longest so I thought this would be a nice minimum. This comes down to circling once every eighteen days.
The technical term for the pulling appart of solid objects by tidal forces as they fall into a black hole is spaghettification. If you fell into a large black hole such as at the center of galaxies; you would be fine for a couple of hours inside the event horizon before tidal forces pulled you appart. For smaller black holes the tidal forces can be so large that sphagettification happens outside the event horizon.
My pre-video guess is probably not because to get the force required, you'd have to be impossibly close to it or orbiting so slowly that earth and other things would interfere.
Now I gotta download that game again, you made me miss it.
Missed Aerodynamic forces in LEO keeping things from orbiting, but good video.
Scott,
If you had the astronaut in an orbit synced with the station, but with the periapsis slightly below that of the station, and the apoapsis slightly above, wouldn't the astronaut precess around the station as though he was orbiting?
Great content Scott!
been wondering about this for a while. thanks
Even without N body, you can get two objects with the same semimajor axis to "orbit" each other. Like if one is in a circular orbit, and the other is slightly elliptical, where they're aligned with the planet at periapsis and apoapsis.
More important: the stranded astronaut had a mess of machaca the night before. Where do you mount the reaction wheels to counteract the torque of his spontaneous butt thruster malfunctions?
i love listening to these. please do many many more :)
It is always good to understand the gravity of the situation.
This channel makes me want to study astrophysics
I believe Bob Fitch had a satellite that used a pseudo orbit for one of his stations, where by something like the ascending and descending nodes where offset 180 degrees from each other. forgive me as I dont recall the episode or series in which this can be cited, I just figured it may be interesting to know.
My integration skills were a bit rusty but I got there: If you are at the edge of the solar panels your escape velocity is about half a millimeter per second.
Does this mean a small object could orbit the center of mass of the space station, while within it? Or does the mass of the space station have to be in one very dense point for this to work? Interesting video as always :)
At first glance I thought the title read: "can an ASTEROID orbit the space station."
Now that would be amazing. Yes, probably lethal. But amazing!
The atmospheric drag from the small fraction of atomic oxygen up there would not that also be a factor? Don’t forget about solar wind also that has a small amount of force as well I believe.
Thanks for making this video it was a thought-provoking exercise.
The display at the end with the supernova made me wonder, what happens to the other star when the white dwarf goes supernova? Is it dispersed by the blast or does it remain intact to some extent?