Posts

Showing posts from April 25, 2019

A planet that cannot be orbited [duplicate]

Image
3 $begingroup$ This question already has an answer here: A moon that is hard to orbit 4 answers I'm wondering if it is possible for a planet to be impossible to orbit stably over a significant length of time. The shorter the length of time the planet can be orbited for, the better. It should be possible to land on the planet, just not to maintain an orbit around it without the requirement for near-constant fuel expenditure for stationkeeping purposes. What mechanism could cause the planet to be almost impossible to orbit for more than a few orbital periods? reality-check spaceships hard-science orbital-mechanics