Comment on Little Pea Shooters
d00ery@lemmy.world 4 days ago
This is a sling. Bottom right corner is a catapult and uses stored energy (the elastic - sorry if wrong wording.) To me at least the idea of sling that pivots around the user’s hand is much closer to the action of using a planet’s gravitational pull to sling a satellite onwards.
Ziglin@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You wouldn’t want to do it with a satellite and I’ve only ever heard of it being called a slingshot (which usually refers to the device pictured in the meme, likely increasing clarity) or a gravity assist.
The motion does seem to be more accurate though.
d00ery@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Good point! A satellite is more likely to orbit a planet monitoring things I guess? It’s been a while since I’ve played Kerbal Space Program!
Ziglin@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Satellites are objects orbiting a planet or some other smaller object. One could argue that it is a satellite on the way though too.
I find the idea of an object like the moon doing a gravity assist around Jupiter to get to us very amusing.