Asri-unix.707
net.space
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:sri-unix!Tavares.WFSO@MIT-Multics
Sat Feb  6 16:28:33 1982
Horseshoe Orbits
All you space whizzes, don't get on me, I know I'm ignorant.  But this
is the second time I've heard horseshoe orbits explained in this
fashion.  What puzzles me is the explanation that "the lower one is
attracted by the higher one ahead of it, making it go faster and
therefore into a higher orbit."  As was mentioned several times during
the Skylab "re-entry," higher orbits are SLOWER, not faster.  If the
moon thus accelareted doesn't immediately fly into space, it must have
to do with some interaction whereby the other moon, now lower (and
slower) pulls it back.  This sounds weird.  It would be more likely that
the moons are really orbiting each other, and the "horseshoe" effect is
an optical illusion-- a cycloid-like figure, perhaps, traced out solely
because both these moons are orbiting something larger in the meanwhile.
Is this what is actually happening?

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