
What's So Special About Low-Earth Orbit? - Amorymeltzer
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whats-special-low-earth-orbit/
======
fsg7sdfg789
Beyond the information presented, this is really neat to see interactive
visualizations with code that can be edited inline.

It reduces the apparent distance between "wow cool visualization" and the code
that generated it.

The more people see code regularly, and can connect it with something they
understand, the more likely they are to be code fluent.

~~~
Macsenour
Prolly off topic but: I show my code to my sister who is a professional artist
every chance I get. It demystifies the process in her mind and makes me better
at understanding what is happening around her.

------
tsotha
From an energy perspective, as Heinlein pointed out "Once you get to earth
orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system."

~~~
phreeza
Except if you want to go somewhere - and then stay there.

~~~
a3n
Once you go somewhere, you're halfway to staying there.

------
dharma1
I was delighted to learn recently you can get a nanosatellite to orbit for not
very much money, and at the same time disappointed to find out that it would
not stay up there for very long. Somehow I thought satellites could stay on
orbit permanently

~~~
rtkwe
Yep there's still a good bit of atmospheric drag even at the ISS's altitude.
Once you get beyond the atmosphere you get solar wind creating drag too. The
ISS is periodically reboosted into a higher orbit by engines on one of the
Russian modules.

~~~
DavidSJ
Also, small satellites have much higher surface area to mass ratios.

~~~
rtkwe
Yeah that's another big factor in how fast they decay. The fact that they
deorbit easily is good though, if they stayed up for a long time it'd be
harder for NASA to approve so many so easily because they'd become a threat to
LEO operations. A lot of them are launched from the ISS.

~~~
dharma1
How do the approvals work if you are not in the US?

~~~
rtkwe
The ESA and JAXA both seem to run approvals too. I'm not sure about their
current plans/proposal request statuses the only ones a surface googling finds
are several years old so they might be in between proposal cycles.

------
Terr_
I'd be interesting to see some example orbits re-scaled so that instead of
showing physical distance, their "altitude" is actually the energy necessary
to establish and maintain them for a reasonable period of time.

~~~
Amorymeltzer
Someething like xkcd's Gravity Wells
([https://xkcd.com/681/](https://xkcd.com/681/)) but for orbits would be neat
indeed.

