[meteorite-list] No soft landings

From: chris sharp <casper_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:09 2004
Message-ID: <001801c23f3b$a99415f0$aa012bca_at_ringtail>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matson, Robert"

| > ie not come in 25km/s and be explosively disintegrated by the
enormous
| > kinetic energy that comes with such a large, high speed mass. I
could
| > imagine a situation where the relative velocities between an
impactor
| > and the Earth were <1 km/s so long as the impactor approached on
the
| > same track as the Earth's orbit around the sun.
|
| The thing you are neglecting is the earth's gravitational field --
| this will accelerate any body (slowly catching up with earth from
| behind, for instance) to at least the escape velocity of earth.

Orbital dynamics is not a strong point of mine, however I agree the
Earth's gravity would accelerate any approaching cosmic body.

Would it be possible for the Earth to "capture" a relatively slow
moving body (wrt the Earths velocity) in an orbit that subsequently
decayed over time to allow the process of air braking to apply?

Could this air braking process, where a body skips through the upper
atmosphere slowing down gradually due to atmospheric resistance, lead
to a final lower impact velocity such that total explosive
disintegration is not inevitable?

just a thought
chris sharp
Received on Thu 08 Aug 2002 08:28:18 PM PDT