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Old 10-07-2018, 10:15 PM   #5
Tom H.
 
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Central Texas, north of Austin
Default Re: Triplanetary: Launching from a planet

It looks like RogerBW has already provided a helpful response.

I had some thoughts as well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nukesnipe View Post
The wording of #2 seems to contradict the rules regarding gravity which state that "gravity takes effect on the turn after an object enters the gravity hex."
I just saw launch from a planet's surface as a special case. Your ship's boosters are accelerating against earth's gravity just to get you to a break even point at orbital altitudes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by nukesnipe View Post
My college son has participated in several NASA events and informed me that while it was conceivably to lift off and enter the right trajectory to get to one's desired destination, it was much more prudent to enter a stable orbit before leaving the planet's gravity well.
Good to hear. I wondered about this, but was sure an answer could come from real world space travel. I was also going to refer you over to the GURPS forums where there appear to be several posters with lots of technical knowledge of topics like this.

I'm guessing that you can save energy or delta V (or whatever) by tapping into some of the orbital energy before you decide to sling out.

I just remember as a kid seeing diagrams of the missions to the moon where the trajectories circled the earth and did the same on reaching the moon presumably to aid in deceleration.
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