Reddit reviews Orbital Mechanics

A book I like a lot is Orbital Mechanics by Prussing and Conway

There's Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bates, Mueller and White. This Dover book is inexpensive.

I did a coloring book on conic sections and orbital mechanics. Mostly Kepler stuff and a little Newton. No Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation in this edition.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199837708/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Orbital Mechanics, by Prussing and Conway.

From what I hear, it's the best. I have it myself, although I haven't used it too much (been busy with other stuff). I CAN tell you, however, that it does include a chapter specifically on ion propulsion, which is what I've been chipping at every now and then. Maneuver nodes work pretty decently with high thrust engines, but not so much for low thrust, which is where the book can help you. The downside is that it's not cheap. I paid about 110 bucks for it on Amazon.

Also, that ion propulsion chapter (or low thrust engines in general, to be more exact) isn't in the first edition, it's in the newer second edition. Legitimately the first time I've actually been happy for an updated edition of a book.

All of my 2004-2006 engineering discipline (300/400 level) classes were book required but not mandatory (i.e. you didn't have to purchase your own book if you could find it by other means).

Orbital Mechanics lasted 19 years until a second edition came out (surprisingly, I would have thought they'd updated a few case scenarios for that field between 1993 and 2012),

Those professors swapped who taught the class each year, and were super non-chalant about whether you had actually bought your own book; they'd print out a stack of end-of-chapter questions for any who wanted to take a copy and just big-balls it based on notes taken in lecture. Most other professers did expect you to have a book, but really didn't care if you had a later edtion (though it was your own problem if your edition's questions didn't match up; solvable by having a study group with a proper-edition book available from the library).

I guess what I'm saying is things went to shit, and it sucks to be you.

Hello, B.S. in Aerospace Engineering here. I took a class in Orbital Mechanics during Undergrad, taught by the man who wrote the book on the subject.

So, short answer: no limit, as long as you get the math right.

The basic physics behind gravity assists involves a fun interplay between conservation of momentum and gravity. If you have a spacecraft flying through space, and it encounters the gravity well of a massive object also flying through space, the spacecraft will naturally be drawn TOWARD that planet. This gravity pull will naturally ACCELERATE that object. Slower spacecraft or spacecraft pointed more or less directly at the planet will simply run into the planet. However, if the spacecraft has enough of its own momentum built up and approaches the planet roughly tangential to that planet's own trajectory thru space, the spacecraft will benefit from the accelerating boost in speed from that planet's gravity but still have enough forward momentum to escape the planet's gravitational pull on keep on its merry way through space, now moving a little bit faster than before.

So, as long as you can keep finding that sweet spot around a planet where you don't crash into the planet and don't miss its gravity well entirely, you can keep benefiting from the accelerating affects of gravity.