Does it really slow down a planet to "slingshot" a spacecraft around it?

Answer 1

Technically, yes, it does. VERY slightly. The energy to speed up that space craft has to come from somewhere. But if the planet weighs a trillion times more than the space craft, then the planet slows down by an amount a trillion times less than the space craft speeds up. It is a momentum transfer. MV=mv, where M is the mass of the planet, V is the speed the planet looses, m is the mass of the space craft and v is the speed the space craft gains.

Answer 2

In orbital mechanics and aerospace engineering, a gravitational slingshot is the use of the motion of a planet to alter the path and speed of an interplanetary spacecraft. It is a commonly used maneuver for visiting the outer planets, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, to reach with current technologies. It is also known as a "gravity assist".

A slingshot maneuver around a planet changes a spacecraft's velocity relative to the Sun, even though it preserves the spacecraft's speed relative to the planet (as it must do, according to the law of conservation of energy). To a first approximation, from a large distance, the spacecraft appears to have bounced off the planet.

Answer 3

Yes, but it's quite near impossible unless the spacecraft has the same kinetic pull that the planet has or more to make it slow down. So that would probably be flying at the speed of light and it'll definitely disentegrate the aircraft at that high of a speed.

Answer 4

it will depend on which way you do the slingshot - it might just as well accelerate the planet!

this being said, even a small planet like Earth has a mass of 6E24 kilos, whereas your typical space probe's mass is maybe a metric ton or 1000 kilos.

so the small Earth is 6E21 times heavier than the probe. So you'd need measuring equipment many billions times more sensitive than what we have today, to be able to measure the effect.

but sure, there is an effect - even if very, very, very small.

Answer 5

anything in outer space that comes close enough to the surface of something can move it. They were going to do that with a spacecraft outside a meteor that is going to come close to hitting earth in the late 2020's and its projected to miss but then slingshot around again in the 30's has a better chance of hitting then. so we'll see how good that moving theory is then =)

Answer 6

the effect of a "slingshot" direction change on a spaceship around a planet can cause a planet to accelerate or decelerate and change direction, depending on the relative paths of the planet and spaceship.

Answer 7

velocity does not make a clock decelerate yet acceleration does. while you're traveling far off from an observer time will seem slowed from the observer's point of view through doppler effect, yet it is in simple terms an phantasm.

Answer 8

Yes, because it is in effect, sharing it´s kinetic energy with the spacecraft. Obviously, the change may be vanishingly small....

Answer 9

Only in proportion to their relative masses, which would be infinitesimal.

Answer 10

No, anyone who says yes is wrong, the answer is no.