Geometers Engineer New Tools to Wrangle Spacecraft Orbits

quantamagazine.org

62 points·piotrkaminski··8 comments

This is really cool research, but to say "symplectic geometry, an abstract field of math that is generally far removed from messy real-world details" in the context of orbit planning is a gross mischaracterization. All serious solar system dynamics research happens in phase space not cartesian space, which means symplectic geometry - that is the orbital parameters are integrated instead of x,y,z. This amusingly named website has a fairly approachable description of what's happening : https://wiki.tfes.org/Symplectic_Integrators

... did you link a website advocating that the shape of Earth is flat?

Flat Earthers spend thousands of times more effort on their research than Roundies do, because they understand that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Few know this.

well only most "roundies" don't waste time on settled concepts. So flat earthers can easily spend 1000 times more effort than no effort at all. its just too bad that their research is stupid and fruitless.

I also think they understand very little.

i thought it was making fun of flat earthers? it's pretty amusing they have a good writeup on a very technical piece of very circular math if that is not the case.

They have newsletters going back to 1977, I can't find any evidence they are satirical.

The term "Geometers" makes me think of Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which is just as will, since the article is about advanced orbits.

The picture at the start of the article looks like Lissajous patterns. And sure enough Lissajous orbits around lagrange points are a thing according to wikipedia.

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