#gravity assist

[4ugust4rt]

Chapter 2 of Gravity Assist is out now!!! Huge shout-out to @eternalgirlscout for being such a phenomenal writer AS ALWAYS!!!!!

[crispysnakes]

Pink Lady dropped a few nights back! 12 big babies and a smaller pair of twins, which was interesting.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Good news: We're still exploring space.

[eternalgirlscout]

Giggles and kicks my feet. "Puzzle" for the ask game

you know, i'm realizing i hadn't even been counting gravity assist for these since the writing part is done. but since you asked >:)

Once, when he was a year or two into elementary school, Shou’s mom sat him down at the kitchen table and poured all the tiny, irregular pieces of a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle across the polished surface. This is something else we can do, she said. Each of the pieces lifted into the air in a haze of cream-and-white, hundreds flipping gently picture-side-up like tiny stones rolling in the shallow ocean tide. With a wave of her hand, the puzzle assembled itself into a pristine painting of a hot spring in winter. She hadn’t even looked at each individual piece. They came together the way they were meant to, how they’d always been, a reverse time-lapse against the forces of entropy. He used to think about it every time he pushed himself to a new psychic breakthrough. Ideas are piecemeal, but true knowledge comes all at once. Seeing the whole picture in his mind’s eye, he would feel each missing piece until a seemingly complex process became a single organic movement. Storing energy, reversing other espers’ powers; anything and everything he puzzled out on his own by instinct. Shou never did learn his mom’s trick, though he can’t remember why—maybe it was soon enough before his parents split up that they never got the chance to practice together. The context is lost to him, but he recalls the image vividly. He owes his mom a lot, and this lesson is high on the list. With dedicated attention and a final goal fixed in place like the North Star, Shou can do anything. The track record is good. After all, this approach only failed him once.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Martian (2015, Ridley Scott)

01/05/2025

[siryl]

“Grav-Assist” by Rob Caswell (utilizing assets from Shawn Davis and N.A.S.A.).

[nova-the-dragon]

You ever just... shoot your arm out to grab the corner of the door frame when turning into a room to get a Gravity Assist™

[startswithabang]

One Simple Reason Why Touching The Sun Is So Hard

“It doesn't simply take a suite of clever instruments to measure the Sun up close, although the Parker Solar Probe has those. It isn't enough to have a thick, carbon-composite shield to withstand the incredible radiation and temperatures present in close proximity to the Sun, although the Parker Solar Probe has those, too. It also requires an incredibly complex, intricate plan to insert yourself into a stable orbit that's capable of bringing you closer to the Sun than anything else ever has before.”

If there’s one law of physics that most people know, it’s Newton’s first law. Objects at rest remain at rest, and objects in motion remain in uniform motion, unless they’re acted on by an outside force. This applies not just to straight-line motions, but to orbiting motions as well. It isn’t just momentum that’s conserved in physics, but angular (or rotational) momentum, too. In order to touch the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe has to somehow get rid of a tremendous amount of angular momentum, and rockets alone aren’t powerful enough to do it. The trick? You have to use the other planets in the Solar System, and give up your angular momentum to them. The Parker Solar Probe will pass close by Venus a record seven times in order to do this, coming within less than 4 million miles of the Sun when they’re all over.

We’ve never touched the Sun before, but thanks to new technology, an ambitious mission, and an incredible flight plan, we’re about to accomplish what was once unthinkable.