From Stargazers to Starships

      Introduction to this part

         Introduction to the Discussion of Kepler's Laws

10. Kepler and his Laws
 10a.   The Scale of the Solar System
11. Graphs and Ellipses
 11a.    Ellipses and Kepler's First Law
12. Kepler's Second Law
 12a.   More on Kepler's Second Law
 12b.   How Orbital Motion is Calculated

Optional: The 2004 Transit of Venus
 12c.     Halley's Method of Deriving the AU
 12d.     The displacement D of the track of Venus
 12e.     Deriving the Astronomical Unit
 

Newtonian mechanics

Optional: Spaceflight to Mars
 21b.     Flight to Mars: How Long? Along what Path?
 21c.     Flight to Mars: Calculations
 21d.     Flight to Mars: the Return Trip

22. Frames of Reference: The Basics
 22a     The Aberration of Starlight
 22b     The Theory of Relativity
 22c     Airplane Flight
 22d     Airplane Flight: How high? How fast? (optional)
23. Accelerated Frames of Reference: Inertial Forces
 23a     Frames of Reference: The Centrifugal Force
 23b     Loop-the-Loop (optional)
24a. The Rotating Earth
24b. Rotating Frames of Reference in Space and on Earth
.

The Sun

                The Sun--Introduction

          How the Sun produces weather and climate
S-1.     Sunlight and the Earth
    S-1A.     Weather and the Atmosphere
    S-1B.     Global Climate, Global Wind flow

S-2.     Our View of the Sun
S-3.     The Magnetic Sun
    S-3A.     Interplanetary Magnetic Field Lines
S-4.     The Many Colors of Sunlight
  S-4A.     Experimenting with Colors
S-5.     Waves and Photons
S-6.     Seeing the Sun in a New Light
S-7.     The Energy of the Sun

Peripheral Subjects related to section S-7 above:

LS-7A     The Discovery of Atoms and Nuclei
                   (A very quick overview of the relevant history.)
S-7A     The Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy
S-8.     Nuclear Power
S-9.     Nuclear Weapons

Spaceflight and Spacecraft

25. The Principle of the Rocket
26. Robert Goddard and his Rockets
27. The Evolution of the Rocket
28. Spaceflight
29. Spacecraft
 29a.  Satellites observing the Sun, solar system and the universe
 29b.   Satellites observing Earth from above
 29c.   Satellites which observe the local space environment
 29d.   Satellites for commercial benefits
 29e.   Missions to planets and distant space
30. Far-out Pathways to Space: Great Guns?
 30a.    Project HARP and the Martlet
31. Far-out Pathways to Space: Nuclear Power
32. Far-out pathways to Space: Solar Sails
 32a.    Early Warning of Interplanetary Disturbances
33. Ion Rockets

34. Orbits in Space
 34a.    The Distance to the L1 Point
 34b.    The L4 and L5 Lagrangian Points
 34c.    The L4 and L5 Points--Another Derivation
35. Starships
 35a.     Planetary Swing-by and the Pelton Turbine

            Afterword:   "Do Frogs Exist there Too ?"

A Math Refresher

Elements of algebra

(M-1) Basic ideas
(M-1A) Algebra Proficiency Drill
(M-2) How it all started
(M-3) Formulas
(M-4) Identities
(M-5) Deriving Approximate Results

(M-6) The Theorem of Pythagoras

Elements of trigonometry

(M-7) What is it good for?
(M-8) How to tell sines from cosines
(M-9) Deriving sines and cosines
(M-10) Going past 90 degrees
(M-11) Deriving sin(α+β), cos(α+β).
(M-11A) Trigonometry Proficiency Drill
(M-12) The Tangent

Helpful Material