Talk:Orbital spaceflight
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[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
