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    Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

    Actually, you can. I'll have an example for you and the OP later today. With that said ... Gentlemen, what is your point? Seriously. This thread started because someone saw something he thought was pretty cool on a fictional television show that features faster-than-light travel, aliens...
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    Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

    Or you could do a retrograde sling around Jupiter, and kill your heliocentric angular momentum that way.
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    Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

    True ... but unless you live on the Sun, any orbit that takes you that close to it from your starting point will have a very high eccentricity.
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    Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

    Star Trek called that a slingshot. Well, Star Trek also had a planet populated by Nazis. On another planet, they ran into the Greek god Apollo. :lol: And I suspect that if they hadn't called this particular maneuver a "slingshot" -- which it wasn't -- a lot of confusion could have been...
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    Flight Question Slingshot around the sun

    I'm not a hard core Trekkie, and had to look at the page to get the details. "an encounter with a previously-uncharted black star required the crew to utilize all warp power in reverse to break away from the star's powerful gravitational attraction, creating a whiplash effect." OK, so they...
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    Request General Launch Windows 20 Years

    OK, I'm not sure what you're asking for here. By launch windows, do you mean, for example ... 1) "I need to know when Jupiter is in a good position relative to Earth that I can send a craft to it in a way I need" -- whether that's minimal delta-V for the eject from Earth orbit; or maybe...
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    General Question Whats to know for Orbital Mechanics

    > I need to know what math courses and concepts are required for learning and understanding celestial/orbital mechanics. To be prepared to study basic, two-body orbital math, I think you could get by with these prerequisites: High school algebra -- solving equations in one variable; occasional...
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    Flight Question Orbital rendezvous trouble

    It sounds like you're getting into orbit, aligning planes, etc. correctly, but let's be sure of that. I'm assuming that since you apparently haven't rendezvoused with anything yet, you're probably trying to get to ISS or Mir with their orbits unaltered from the standard Orbiter distribution...
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    Hardware Need some advice on building/buying a desktop PC.

    I've built a few PCs, and here's what I do to check that. Immediately after putting everything together, I'll: 1) Install a copy of Windows. XP or Win7 is fine, and no need to activate it, this is temporary. 2) Install HWMonitor (freeware) on the computer, and start that running. 3) Start...
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    Hardware A Basic Guide to Building a PC

    I've done a little of this myself -- built a few PCs from scratch and worked on several others. I'm far from being an expert; I'm a guy who knows a few things and who has several friends who know less than I do, so I end up being the "go to" guy. Anyway, my comments, for what they're worth...
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