Talk:Aerobraking

Why Maglev?
Will someone check if the Maglev TOC at the end of the article is adequate? I don't think it has anything to do with Aerobraking or Space Propulsion in any way.

Aerobraking
Can somebody add some numbers? What speed, temperature, etc please?

Topic needs revising
This page needs to be re-written. The author has confused and mixed aerobraking with aerocapture and direct entry.--Belchja 16:41, 21 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, and made a first attempt. I had a good reason to keep these two straight (around 1998)! BTW, the picture really does look like aerocapture, but I'm reticent to remove it without a replacement. MFago 04:18, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Are plane changes/cross-range maneuvers really typical of aerobraking?MFago 04:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Do people think the sectioning helps for such a short article? MFago 00:01, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Talk from Aerobrake
A much more accurate description of Aeroassist maneuvers is located at Marshall Space Flight Center's In-space propulsion website. 

MCO did not fail because of "an error in the execution of the aerobraking maneuver", it failed because a unit conversion. The trajectory error caused the spacecraft to enter the atmosphere at lower than designed limits and was destroyed because of this.


 * One could say this is the same thing. Nevertheless, three years of my life .... MFago 04:20, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Merging with Aerocapture
shouldn't this article be merged with that? --Juxi 07:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No, Aerobraking and Aerocapture are two different Aeroassist techniques Belchja 21:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Occurances in fiction
The Clarke maneuver is definitely aerocapture, not aerobraking. I suspect the Hienlein one too, but I have no copy of Space Cadet. Aerobraking is too tedious to make much of a plot device, especially since it makes most sense when the initial orbit is several days long. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LouScheffer (talk • contribs) 22:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No, found the book, and it's aerobraking.  LouScheffer (talk) 11:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It is not clear whether a single pass through a planetary atemosphere to change trajectory without entering orbit as occurs in some SF stories is aerobraking or aerocapture. I would consider it aerobraking. Danwoodard (talk) 02:58, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I am not sure if that statement regarding Aerobreaking in Stargate Universe is correct. I think they use the simple gravity assist in breaking direction. The pass through the atmosphere is a side effect to this. The course change and "gravity assist break" seem to be the primary "goals" --Szap 84.147.62.172 (talk) 09:28, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


 * To me, this entire conversation demonstrates why this whole section is likely just original research and synthesis. It's like including the lightsaber into the laser article and debating the feasibility of such a weapon on the talk page. It's fiction, where anything can happen. And let's face it, the science in the fiction is just a prop, while the real story is always about the people. Thus, we shouldn't expect a whole lot of accuracy or the writers to be fully versed on the realities of spaceflight (with the possible exception of Michael Crichton). For example, nearly every science fiction story completely neglects the overall gravity of the sun (or central star of the system, "Sol" in our case). When climbing in orbit away from the sun, you're gaining potential energy but losing speed (kinetic energy). When approaching a planet like Jupiter, you don't need to decelerate to enter orbit, you need to accelerate (relative to the sun) and first catch up to its orbital speed around the sun. Thus you would want to pull in on its six and use its gravity (not atmosphere, it would be suicide to get that close) to speed your craft up to its orbital velocity, causing your craft to gain energy and Jupiter to lose a tiny speck of its energy. (Now if you were diving toward the sun to reach Mercury it would be a different story.) Relative to Jupiter, you simply dove into its gravity well and pulled back out again, returning to your original speed, but relative to the sun your craft has gained massive amounts of speed by extracting the energy from Jupiter's gravity. (See: Potential energy and Talk:Potential energy. In real spaceflight, you can really start to see why we needed a Theory of Relativity.) This gravity-assist or "slingshot" maneuver is most likely what the creators or 2001: A Space Odyssey were trying to emulate not fully understanding what the maneuver is really used for. It's pointless to try to call it in reality some aerobraking maneuver, because in reality it's all just fiction.


 * Bouncing off a planet's atmosphere at 80,000 miles per hour is a great way to destroy a spacecraft, but a poor way to change direction or speed. Gravity assist is much more effective and far less dangerous, not needing to even come near the atmosphere. What I would say is that, unless a story specifically refers to a maneuver as "aerobraking" we shouldn't be trying to decipher what that maneuver is ourselves, because that's the very definition of OR and Synth. (In my personal view, all of it is totally irrelevant to the subject of this article, and at best belongs in the articles about the stories themselves. But thats just me.) Zaereth (talk) 18:36, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Aerobraking time
There must be some mathematical formula that can be used to calculate how long it takes to aerobrake. If we could find a source that gives that information, it could be useful here. Nat682 (talk) 18:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd think that the time requirement would depend on the atmosphere and it's turbulence, composition, thickness, etc, as well as on the design and structure of the spacecraft, the risks its operators are willing to take, and the mission's goals. So it's probably plenty more complicated than a simple formula. Vsst (talk) 00:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Grammar and style
Could some English native speaker check section "Method" for grammar - the sentence with "...unpredictability turbulence...to predict..." sounds wrong to me. Ovejan (talk) 12:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, fixed this and improved (I hope) some other wording as well. LouScheffer (talk) 11:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Force or force density
comparable to that acted on the hand? (chapter Method) Consider 3.7 m2 of sonde vs. 0,02 m2 of the hand. --Helium4 (talk) 12:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Aerodynamic braking
In looking to place a photo there, I noticed that aerodynamic braking redirects to this article. I'm wondering if this should be a separate article, because aerodynamic braking is a method used in landing airplanes. It consists of holding the nose high while rolling down the runway, using the force of air to help slow the craft down. The photo to the right shows what this looks like. I don't know if it should be a separate article, or a separate section in this one. However, it is very different from the braking described here. I don't think spacecraft use aerodynamic braking, except the space shuttle when it is landing.

Hiten probe description uses wrong units
The article describes the Hiten probe as decelerating by 1.712 meters/second during its aerobraking maneuver, dropping its apogee by 8665 km. This is clearly off by a factor of a thousand, at the initial speed they describe (11 km/s), decelerating by 1.712 kilometers/second would produce the stated drop in apogee. I've changed the article to read "km/s". Unfortunately the source cited also has that typo, so I wanted to make a note of the change here. Drunaii (talk) 17:36, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

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