Energy
Under standard assumptions, specific orbital energy of parabolic trajectory is zero, so the orbital energy conservation equation for this trajectory takes form:
where:
- is orbital velocity of orbiting body,
- is radial distance of orbiting body from central body,
- is the standard gravitational parameter.
This is entirely equivalent to the characteristic energy (square of the speed at infinity) being 0:
Read more about this topic: Parabolic Trajectory
Famous quotes containing the word energy:
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)
“His eloquence was of every kind, and he excelled in the argumentative as well as in the declamatory way. But his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such energy of diction, and stern dignity of action and countenance, that he intimidated those who were the most willing and the best able to encounter him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)