The speed required to orbit around a body depends primarily on the distance from the center of the body.
then we can just slow or speed up the earths orbital velocity and its orbit would not increase or decrease?
Bill, have you never heard of "orbital velocity"?
Orbital velocity is the velocity needed to achieve balance between gravity's pull on the satellite and the inertia of the satellite's motion
Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass.
So what we end up with is that what you wrote
That doesn't follow at all.
is what doesnt follow at all !
but its an easy mistake if you only look at things such as
below.
http://ceres.hsc.edu/homepages/classes/astronomy/spring99/Mathematics/sec10.html but these mistakes can kill people.
The mass of the orbiting body has almost nothing to do with the radius of the orbit.
on the contrary Bill , it is the satelights mass that determines the necessary velocity to attain a certain orbital distance from a body.
In mid-March, the ATV increased the ISS’s orbit with a 882-second (14 and a half minutes) burn, giving the ISS an extra push of about 2.1 m/s. In all, Kepler brought nearly 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms) of propellant that has been used by its thrusters to boost the space station to a new altitude of 400 kilometers (248 miles) above the Earth. This will be the new “normal” for the station’s orbit. Previously, the ISS orbited about 350 km (220 miles) up.
increase orbital velocity = increase orbital distance
decrease orbital velocity = decrease orbital distance
that is why I said the below that you commented on
they must be extremely heavy to just remain orbiting the sun at such a close proximity otherwise they would need a tremendous velocity to remain in orbit.
sometimes I wonder how anyone ever gets a college degree.
