Does the centrifugal "force" have an effect on orbiting ships?

[gmpd2000]

Question in the title.

Does it? Even if its very small?

[SargeRho]

Only if they're spinning.

[ZetaX]

The centrifugal force of what¿ The planet¿ The ship¿ An astronaut¿

[Decent Weasel]

Force pushing outward?

Wouldn't that just be the ship's tangential velocity?

[K^2]

Centrifugal force is a fictitious force. It appears only in a specific coordinate system. You can think of it as being there to make physics consistent between different coordinate systems. Funamentally, gravity works the same way, but that's a much deeper topic.

Centrifugal force is always there if your coordinate system rotates. For example, if you track position of the orbiting ship relative to Earth, which rotates, you'll have to add centrifugal force in. Similarly, you can compute physics of the orbiting ship in polar coordinates. That will also require you to add centrifugal force to the ship. I seem to recall KSP taking centrifugal into account, but I don't remember why. It's been a while since I looked at the game's code.

On the other hand, if you look at an orbiting ship from perspective of an inertial coordinate system, in which Earth appears to spin at its own speed, and orbital ship at its speed, you'll note that no forces other than gravity are acting on the ship. As a result the space ship constantly accelerates towards the center of the planet. It just keeps missing it.

[Bill Phil]

If by centrifugal force you mean the force of acceleration due to rotation...

Well, orbits only exist because of that. So, yes? Unless you mean that the force is actually felt, then no.

[TythosEternal]

Obligatory XKCD link:

http://xkcd.com/123/

[lajoswinkler]

It's important to explain that "fictious" in "fictious force" doesn't mean the force doesn't exist. It's better to call it pseudoforce. It's very real in one frame of reference.

[Jovus]

Considering that all force is purely relative to your frame of reference - yes, you can arbitrarily construct a reference frame wherein a given translatory force doesn't exist - I'm not convinced centrifugal should be given special status.

As to the question: yes. However, if you're in orbit, it's counteracted by the force of gravity. Kinda the definition of an orbit.

[Newt]

Yeah. It is essentially the force (okay, psuedoforce) that enables an orbit. You can do calculations for orbital period and that sort of thing using the same equations as for centrifugal force, although with non circles, complexity builds.