Talk:Orbital spaceflight

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 May 2020 and 4 August 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Farheem. Peer reviewers: Integrationtool.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:48, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Angular velocity
Would any important insight be lost if we removed the references to angular velocity in the lead section of this article? (My personal perspective is that mentioning angular velocity only adds confusion about what keeps satellites in orbit.) If we were to replace this with consistent use of "horizontal speed" what would be lost? (sdsds - talk) 01:16, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Another way of saying this
This edit introduced to the article the phrase, "Another way of saying this, is the outward centrifugal force on the spacecraft due to its angular velocity is greater than or equal to the inward force due to gravity." I'm having trouble understanding this explanation. It seems to imply that the orbiting spacecraft would never get closer to the body it orbits. Yet this is not what happens, except in the case of a perfectly circular orbit. For an elliptical orbit, there are some places along the trajectory where the spacecraft is moving closer to the body it is orbiting. What's up with that? (sdsds - talk) 14:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Deorbit and Re-entry
This section tends to only deal with the scenario of deorbiting with the intention of "surviving" the re-entry, either manned or unmanned. Many deorbits of satellites are intentionally performed destructively, in order to dispose of malfunctioning, or end or life, orbiting objects. Although the alternative is to send these objects to a "graveyard" orbit," satellites that are no longer capable of reaching a higher orbit often have no choice but to deorbit. A questionable statement in this section implies a satellite in this scenario (no fuel) must use aero-braking to deorbit.  How is it able to reach the mesosphere, without some form of artificial braking in the first place, short of simply degrading orbit slowly over time? SquashEngineer (talk) 14:36, 2 June 2016 (UTC)  Also "... avoiding hitting the ground (lithobraking) ..." neither the ground nor lithobraking have anything to do with deorbiting; those are landing topics. SquashEngineer (talk) 15:43, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Additional References and Proposal for New Sections
Below are some sources that can contribute to the credibility of this article and add new information

Explains difference between orbital and suborbital flight, specifically the speeds that are required for each and trajectory. Can be cited at various points in this article. Also provides a good analogy of ball being thrown to appeal to a general public audience. Finally it outlines some key milestones in orbital flight. https://www.space.com/suborbital-orbital-flight.html

History of Orbital Spaceflight specifically advancements in use of upper stages of rockets for Europeans and Chinese navigation satellite systems. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0094576511000269?token=48078476DF803CF5494E0951D26D18FC84DEF9CF685F288FB10A2E8AEEB03E059E76429E53ABF4460FA93A93A6B61D2A

Provides insight into NASA's Space Launch System which could be part of information under new section called: "New Advancements in Orbital Spaceflight" and also Human Landing System currently in development by NASA and it's industry partners. https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/overview.html https://www.nasa.gov/content/more-about-the-human-landing-system-program

A section could be added to this article to go over effects of orbital space flight on humans. https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S8756328200002349?token=6AFA7E14295FF670CE61EDE3368B11B072F34112509BF5A3E7D2D3CADEB4399CCBD3F62B37E5043239BCF2155124B272 https://compass-astm-org.libproxy2.usc.edu/CUSTOMERS/search/search.html?query=human%20space%20travel&dltype=all

Feel free to comment if you think it's a good idea or not to include these sources and sections to this article. Farheem (talk) 02:42, 13 July 2020 (UTC)