Nerd Stuff that blew your mind. Post your question

MaC122

Yea.... I know the topic is crazy. Its just anything cool that you have learned about.. Obviously I will start.

So lets say that there is two of us in orbit around the Earth. I have engines. You are faster than me and I need to catch up to you. How do I catch you?

victor1

rocket loan from quickens, i'll find you and take your money.  my guess is you would fire your rockets to slow down your orbit and i would catch up to you.

bigbadben

MaC122 said:

Yea.... I know the topic is crazy. Its just anything cool that you have learned about.. Obviously I will start.

So lets say that there is two of us in orbit around the Earth. I have engines. You are faster than me and I need to catch up to you. How do I catch you?

Turn around. Catch them in the other side of earth. 

kl8ton

Wait until I (the faster one) approach.  As I approach, you fire rockets briefly to match my speed.  Assuming this was a government funded mission, i think this would save the taxpayers the most money. Since your thread title states something about blowing my mind, I am assuming none of our answers thus far are correct.

saluki2007

victor1 said:

rocket loan from quickens, i'll find you and take your money.  my guess is you would fire your rockets to slow down your orbit and i would catch up to you.

God am I sick of that F-ing commercial.

CanadianAnvil

Move to a lower orbit. Therefore a less distance  around the planet you can travel going your slower speed to catch or match the other ship. 

Save the rockets for when the interstellar war starts. 

caliking

I hire a consultant.  That usually slows everything down. 

blasting

Or let the government take it over - that'll really slow it down.

nolaegghead

Go into an elliptical orbit

YukonRon

Assuming velocity remains constant for both vehicles at a given circumference, lower the orbital distance (decreasing circumference) of slower vehicle. Less distance requires less time, allowing slower vehicle to match or exceed faster vehicles velocity.

Mikee

Using the engines to slow down would drop you to a lower orbit. While your linear speed would be slower, your rotational speed will have increased.

fishlessman

create a wormhole that is stable on one side in his orbital path and fly into the other end tomorrow, you will catch him today time travel 101

HeavyG

Tractor beam of course.

RiverRatSkier

Assuming both are in stable circular orbits at the start, and on the same plane:

The faster vehicle will be at a lower orbit.  The slower vehicle that has the engines will need to properly time a burn to slow down and drop closer to earth, then speed up to maintain that orbit and match the speed of the faster vehicle.

jabam

Take a perpendicular route to the nominal axis of bot vehicles, turn 123 degrees in counterclockwise direction, decrease speed by 17.5%. And in approx 38 minutes 24 seconds, you should catch him....or her ( must be PC). If that doesn't work, then I do t have a clue!

MaC122

CanadianAnvil said:

Move to a lower orbit. Therefore a less distance  around the planet you can travel going your slower speed to catch or match the other ship. 

Save the rockets for when the interstellar war starts. 

boom. mind blown. so you burn away from your target and that puts you into a lower, faster orbit.

1move

Flux Capacitor 

SciAggie

MaC122 said:

CanadianAnvil said:

Move to a lower orbit. Therefore a less distance  around the planet you can travel going your slower speed to catch or match the other ship. 

Save the rockets for when the interstellar war starts. 

boom. mind blown. so you burn away from your target and that puts you into a lower, faster orbit.

It is counter intuitive; you slow down to drop to a lower and faster orbit.
http://howthingsfly.si.edu/media/speeding-and-slowing-down-orbit

nolaegghead

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

fishlessman

im sticking with time travel and worm holes, dont remember the formula back in college when i was taking nuclear engineering but i do believe i broke something in my brain trying to measure the size increase of a standard textbook traveling in a spaceship at the speed of light while observing it from earth as it flew from the moon to the sun at a certain angle relative to earth using that friggin formula. i do remember the trick is to stabilize the worm hole at a certain point of time and to enter the other side but you can only travel back in time to the day you stabilized one side=)

fishlessman

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

nolaegghead

fishlessman said:

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

because space is a vacuum, man

fishlessman

nolaegghead said:

fishlessman said:

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

because space is a vacuum, man

makes more sense the world is flat......THE WORLD IS FLAT

Mikee

SciAggie said:

It is counter intuitive; you slow down to drop to a lower and faster orbit.
http://howthingsfly.si.edu/media/speeding-and-slowing-down-orbit

That's my thoughts as well. The orbital distance is actually measured from the center of the earth to the object.

The velocity is directionally proportional to the square root of the radius. If you reduce the radius by 1/2 the object would be traveling at .707 at the rate of speed it was originally traveling. So the closer the orbit the slower (linear speed) it must go. So how does it catch up? Reducing the radius means the object travels a much shorter distance to make 1 complete orbit; it will now travel .500 of the distance to make a single orbit. If this object took 24 hours in its original orbit, reducing its orbit distance by 1/2 will now make a full orbit in 17 hours.

MaC122

fishlessman said:

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

I am assuming its the same reason that me running forward on a train that is going the speed of light does not mean I am traveling faster than the speed of light?

theyolksonyou

It's all relative 

MaC122

theyolksonyou said:

It's all relative 

great response! haha

Zmokin

MaC122 said:

fishlessman said:

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

I am assuming its the same reason that me running forward on a train that is going the speed of light does not mean I am traveling faster than the speed of light?

Nope, that is a different phenomena.

Darby_Crenshaw

How are you 'catching up' when you are in a different orbit?

Botch

nolaegghead said:

fishlessman said:

nolaegghead said:

If you are standing on the equator, you are traveling 1040 mph with the surface of the earth due to rotation. 

how come planes travel the same speed with and against that rotational speed

because space is a vacuum, man

Planes can't fly in a vacuum.  Neeners.
 
Don't believe me?  Just Watch!  

Eggcelsior

Stop smoking weed so you can do something less exetensial like the dishes. Or walking the dog.

Then of course, the dog starts positing about Schrödinger's cat. He hates that damn cat.