Sir Issac Newton would be proud.

Here's a game (sort of) where you put asteroids in orbit around the earth and moon. See how long you can go without crashing. Just put your pointer where you want the asteroid to start and left click, the faster you move your mouse before you release the left click the faster the asteroid goes. Have Fun!!

http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/applets/satellites.html

So far I still have 3 going for a little over 2 hours.

Way slick.

I like firing them in oposite orbits. Don't know what will happen when they collide since I haven't been able to achieve it yet.

I let go about 50 - 60 of them just clicking away. As far as I can tell they don't seem to collide with each other just the earth or moon. It's neat to let that many go for a few hours or overnight and see what is still orbiting.

I sent a ton of them into clockwise and counter clockwise orbits. They've been going for almost 4 hours now and I still have 6 in orbit. I'm going to let it go and see how long they stay up.

Suprisingly, the only ones that are left are ALL going in a clockwise direction. I assume this has to do with the moon going in a counter clockwise direction and asteroids going in that direction spend a longer period of time near it and suseptible (sp?) to it's gravity. (an asteriod going the same direction as the moon you will notice will remain closer to it for longer instead of wizzing by it as it passes like the ones going the opposite direction.)

I tried to blow up the moon by barraging it with asteroids. It didn`t even budge. No fair

I then just fired a load out into orbit and left it going overnight and all today while I was at work.

18 hours later and there`s still 6 of`em, all going clockwise round and round.

Now there are only four. And the moon`s still there too.

This game`s no fun!

Probably because it is not a game. Now think of one of these little beasties is a Near-Earth asteroid, nickle-iron in composition, 1/2 mile diameter, nominal yield on impact-1,000,000 megatons. Scared yet? If not, consider that the U.S. government spends a paltry 4 million dollars a year to track these and this amount is less than the average amount spent by a congressman running for re-election. Add to this that as of 1999, there were fewer than 20 people globally, tracking these things. Now if you will please notice, the bulk of these impact the Earth and not the Moon. Now are you scared?

Dan

(yes, I knew it wasn`t a game! I was just messing....)

BTW still one of my asteroids left a-circling the Earth. Let`s all hope when it lands, it lands on a *certain someone* in Iraq......