How big are Honorverse Asteroid Belts?

hanuman wrote:One always gets the idea from astronomers' talk about the asteroid belt that it contains ALL the asteroids in the solar system, but that simply isn't true, is it?

I mean, there are thousands, if not millions, of sizeable asteroids distributed throughout the rest of the solar system - many of them quite close to Earth's orbit.

I'd suggest that it'd be far more economically feasible to focus any future asteroid-based resource extraction efforts on those asteroids than the asteroid belt itself. Any comments?

hanuman wrote:I'd suggest that it'd be far more economically feasible to focus any future asteroid-based resource extraction efforts on those asteroids than the asteroid belt itself. Any comments?

Tenshinai wrote:

hanuman wrote:
So it's not as if they're just hanging around in space? They have actual orbits of their own?

Uh, yeah why shouldn´t they have? If they didn´t they would quickly be pulled into an orbit or be slingshot away from the solar system.

Also, do recall that the sun and the solar system as a whole MOVES.

hanuman wrote:
So it's not as if they're just hanging around in space? They have actual orbits of their own?

hanuman wrote:I was thinking of the asteroids at the La Grange points that Theemile mentioned.

The solar system is much like a moving car with a fly flying around inside, it seems to me. Although the car is moving at a far greater speed than the fly could manage, it still manages not to get squashed against the rear window because everything inside the car is contained within it. I'd think the same goes for the solar system's various components - despite the speed at which the sun moves through space, the various lesser components of the solar system continue in their stable orbits because they are contained within the sun's gravity field.

Just a thought.

SWM wrote:

hanuman wrote:I was thinking of the asteroids at the La Grange points that Theemile mentioned.

The solar system is much like a moving car with a fly flying around inside, it seems to me. Although the car is moving at a far greater speed than the fly could manage, it still manages not to get squashed against the rear window because everything inside the car is contained within it. I'd think the same goes for the solar system's various components - despite the speed at which the sun moves through space, the various lesser components of the solar system continue in their stable orbits because they are contained within the sun's gravity field.

Just a thought.

Even the asteroids in the Jovian Lagrange Points have orbits. It just happens that the orbit is similar to Jupiter's orbit, approximately 60 degrees ahead and behind it.

("just happens" is not quite correct, of course. If its were in an orbit close to Jupiter's and wasn't in those locations, Jupiter would perturb the asteroid over a few hundred orbits until the asteroid was no longer in an orbit near Jupiter's. So anything that was close to Jupiter has been moved away, leaving only those which happened to drift into the Lagrange Points.)

Your analogy for the way the planets accompany the sun in it's motion around the galaxy is an adequate way to think about it for casual use, but not mathematically accurate. The sun is not pulling the planets along with it around the Galaxy--the planets have an independent component of motion around the galaxy in the same general direction as the sun. The molecular cloud which collapsed to form the solar system already had a motion vector around the galaxy, so the planets were formed with this motion from the beginning. Having a component of motion around the galaxy does not prevent a planet from also having an orbit around the sun, as long as they share the same galactic motion.

Theemile wrote:
Adding on to what SWM discussed, from a truely static, unmoving viewpoint (as if one existed) we are moving at 10s or 100s of thousands of miles an hour (or more - depending on where you "define" that static viewpoint) in multiple directions.

1st, the Earth spins around its axis at just over 1150 miles an hour (actually it is 1000 NAUTICAL miles an hour) at the equator. The Earth revolves around the Sun at an average of ~67,000 miles an hour. The solar system rotates around the center of the galaxy at about 475,000 miles an hour, and the Milky Way galaxy itself appears to be moving at a speed of ~1.3 million miles an hour.

dizzy yet?

hanuman wrote:

Theemile wrote:
Adding on to what SWM discussed, from a truely static, unmoving viewpoint (as if one existed) we are moving at 10s or 100s of thousands of miles an hour (or more - depending on where you "define" that static viewpoint) in multiple directions.

1st, the Earth spins around its axis at just over 1150 miles an hour (actually it is 1000 NAUTICAL miles an hour) at the equator. The Earth revolves around the Sun at an average of ~67,000 miles an hour. The solar system rotates around the center of the galaxy at about 475,000 miles an hour, and the Milky Way galaxy itself appears to be moving at a speed of ~1.3 million miles an hour.

dizzy yet?

So the Earth's gravity acts as a compensator, yeah?

Theemile wrote:
No - The earth's gravity is jut the strongest pulling on us so it's the only one we really notice. Notice how the 2nd strongest gravitational field in this region (the Moon) is largely un-noticed on a daily basis. It's greatest effect is the tides - caused by the incremental pull of gravity on every water molecule in the planet's oceans crowding towards the Moon. This pressure is caused by EVERY individual liquid molecule's attraction in a single direction squeezing together (which is much, much greater than the gravitational force experienced on any particuliar atom) and only rises the ocean level on average a dozen or so feet.

Gravity's effects decline as a matter of distance squared, so the more distant the object is, the less it's pull - but the pull is still there.

We are "designed", for lack of a better word, to ignore small gravitational tidal forces. When one upsets one's inner ear, one can become more susceptible to these small forces. But we cannot discern the difference between the gravitational levels between our heads and feet or at the tips of an outstretched arm even though they are there.

The physics of just the gravitational changes we experience walking through our everyday life and cannot discern is really facinating and can fill multiple books in and of itself - all matter emits a gravitational pull and it all slowly effects all matter around it.