What happesns when you would release a pod (at 0 m/sl) from a very long (km) base in space?

[xendelaar]

Just a shower thought..

let's say you have a 10 km long base, 'floating' in orbit around kerbin. The base is oriented inward towards the planet, so one end flies at an altitude of say 100 km  and the other end at 110 km. I'm asuming  that the CoG is in the middle and there is an circulair orbit with the AP/PE at 105 km. 

Now we release a small part (let's say a mk1 crew pod) at the lower end of the base. We do it ever so gently at 0 kN and 0,0 m/s. 

What will happen to the mk1 crew pod? Will it follow the base? Staying at 0 m/s relatively velocity to the base? or will it go faster since it's in a lower orbit of 100 km? Will this orbit be also circulair?  

 

[GoSlash27]

Being at a lower altitude, its gravitational attraction to the Earth is slightly greater. Since it has insufficient velocity to maintain a circular orbit, it enters an elliptical orbit with a Pe twice as far from the original craft's center of mass as when it was released. Semi-major axis is reduced, so period is reduced.

Best,

-Slashy

[xendelaar]

Cool. So the craft would drift away from the base.  That's pretty wack right? 

 

I was  playing lone echo yesterday.  It's a game where there are several large bases in orbit around the rings of Saturn. Pretty sweet.  But I noticed that all the vessels are in a fixed distance of each other, while their altitudes all differ. So I was like... hey that's not how things work in space.. hehe.  And now I'm here.. asking these silly questions. 

 

[The Aziz]

The station definitely needs some attitude control to stay in the same position relative to the planet. That, added to the fact that center of mass is somewhere in the half, means that neither bottom or top end orbit at speed adequate to their altitude. The released pod will start at the same speed but on low altitude, and here regular orbital physics come into play, what happens if your velocity at any given altitude is different from one needed for the orbit to be circular? The opposite side of the orbit is at different altitude.

Yes it will drift off.

Actually, you can test it in ksp using eva construction. Cheat a long stick with removable parts on both ends into orbit, bring an engineer there, remove one and just kinda put it outside. Repeat on the other end. They shouldn't move at first too much but if you let them orbit a bit, you'll notice their movement away from the stick.

Edited July 26, 2021 by The Aziz

[Serenity]

So in these scenarios lets say the original vessel is rotating at a certain way.

Is it possible that after the separations happen, very gently as said above, all the individual parts to start drift off at the same/close rate.

Or it would be pretty much a randomized chaos?

Edited July 26, 2021 by Serenity