spaceship one

On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 05:41:36 +0100, anonymous coward
wrote:

But one thing you can't do is "slow fly" a satellite. For any given speed,
for any given velocity vector, there is only one possible orbit. Sure, you
can probably increase your angle of attack and do a "skip", but that just
means that on the other side of the world, you're going to come down at a
much steeper angle. Kinda like bouncing a landing without the ability to
add a burst of power to catch the bounce.

I'm having one of those moments...

I had always wondered why you couldn't dolphin in and out of the earth's
atmosphere, cooling down in between hops.

I think you'd re-enter at steeper and steeper angles each time, since you
lose velocity at each encounter with the atmosphere. I suspect, at some
point, you can't "pull out" and may break up due to the overly steep
re-entry.

Just a guess, mind you.

Ron Wanttaja