Re: Slingshotting ships with gravity wells in SJ

>>NASA has utilised planetary slingshots on most missions that go past a
>>planetary body (or even the moon).

>Though, the ones that go past planetary bodies (everything but the moon so
>far) are all unmanned. It is probably less likely that they'd use it for a
>manned flight, or so I assume in my ignorance.

NASA's initial planning on the manned mission to Mars includes a slingshot
around the moon, IIRC.  Of course, nothing else is available to slingshot
around.  :-]    The movie Aramgeddon was not too far off the mark with with
shuttle slingshot to catch the asteroid.  You can set the amount of g's the
astronauts feel to be any size you want, but the faster you want to go, the
more they will have to endure.


 *IF* you
>>do it right then you can come out of the whole encounter with more speed
>>than you went in (basically, you come out in roughly the same direction as
>>the planet is moving through space, and you get a bit of extra speed
>>because of relative motions).
>
>Ah...The perfect machine...output = input + X...

and   planet after = planet before - X   but it's got a lot of X!   :-]
Cheers

Andrew Tiffany