Love this, KSP really made me understand orbital mechanics

I've wondered about this for 20+ years. Great explanation. You know, this was most of Buzz Aldrin's Ph.D thesis that he never revised.

After a 10 month hiatus to get married, buy real estate and create this animation, I am back! At the time of my last post, there were just over 13,000 subscribers, and now over 40,000! 100,000 subscribers...were coming for you! I'm so grateful to everyone who has watched my videos and patiently waited for the next one! I really hope you all enjoy this one! Cheers!

Great Video and explanation. So to summarize in a nutshell, and to quote Larry Niven, “Forward is out, out is back, back is in, and in is forward.”

One suggestion is that towards the end of the video when describing the ISS rendezvous, to start the retrograde burn from the same initial circular orbit starting condition, instead of trying to correct the previous prograde burn. That way, it will be more obvious what the two difference are and how to intercept the ISS.

Cool video, great animations! I learned orbital mechanics playing Kerbal Space Program, and I love it so much I'm in college now to become a physicist and hopefully work somewhere like SpaceX. Love that you used the Dragon capsule as your ship!

You want to understand orbital mechanics ? Just buy kerbal space program and start playing. At the end you will be a master

Very well done! Have you considered a similar explanation for planetary slingshots? I think a lot of sci-fi writers and even news outlets get it wrong.

Nice KSP tutorial

That was pretty EASY to understand...and it IS rocket science. I'm impressed !!!!

Kerbal space program players: **I AM 9 PARELLEL UNIVERSES AHEAD OF YOU**

OMG! Just watched two of your videos. These are totally awesome - such a great channel!

Your channel is gold mine for a simpleton like me. Good job and keep it up.

The only thing I would change is to show the planet inside the orbital paths rotating about its axis, showing how the suborbital position -- the Earth coordinate -- moves with respect to the orbiting body. Depending on the orbiter's inclination, the North (or South) Pole would be in the center of the spherical planet when the craft is orbiting above the Equator, but would be offset from such a vertical position when the craft is orbiting in an inclined plane relative to the Earth's equatorial plane, with an Ascending Node and a Descending Node associated with this inclined orbital path. Also, depending on the period of the orbit, there would be certain times when the craft would appear above the same point on the Earth below, say, if it orbits 16 times per sidereal day, once every 89 minutes 45.25 seconds. If a spacecraft orbiting above the Equator were to be above 0 deg N, 75 deg W at one point, then after 16 such orbits it would again be above that spot, one sidereal day later. Animating the spinning Earth -- and including a terminator, with a Day side and a Night side -- and having a red wavy line representing the Ground Track as the planet wobbles like a top, now THAT would be cool to see. Maybe a later video could depict these things . . . ? 😎

Absolutely amazing VIDEO with beautiful visuals! LOVE IT

Wow, this video is amazing! Iam in my first year studying physics where we already talked a bit about orbital mechanics but this video is an absolutely gem to get a better understanding of what is really happening… Thx for the effort, you got my sub!

At least for orbital mechanics, I think Douglas Adams was right - the trick to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. :D

Absolutely excellent, thanks for making it!

really helpful if you are struggling to rendezvous while in orbit on KSP, thank you!

Exactly what I needed and exactly like the title. Thank You!!

I’ve watched quite a few videos, each attempting to explain orbital mechanics. I kind of got what was being instructed but, not to a complete understanding. This video however, explains the concepts perfectly. Thank you!!

Great video, it is fun and really informative

This channel deserves more subscribers. What an amazing animation. Just subscribed !!!

This is one of the amazing explanationsI've ever seen. Thanks for your effort

Exceptionally well done!

Probably the best video on UKposts I have ever seen. Amazing. Subscribed

Wow! Extremely helpful video! Thanks a lot

I would add that when you do a normal or anti-normal burn, you also add a small bit of prograde velocity to your new orbit at the new inclination, slightly raising your apoapsis

Heureka! Finally found an explanation which helped me understand this! Big thanks!!

That was brilliant, very well explained, and very informative. Thank you

Never mind I just subscribed and saw you did a video on that exact question! Good job!

Thank you this helped me visualize the xyz vectors of orbits and really helped with a physics project

Definitely earned the sub. Amazing visual explanation thank you 🤩

Great video, and great, understanderable explanation!

This is really well done, thanks!

Subscribed due to the nice graphics and good explanations 👏🏻👏🏻 keep it up

Do a video on the 3 body problem.

I'm not sleepin on that text animation at 4:59 .. that was so smooth

Thanks! Your explanation is excellent, elegant and accurate! I tend to get technical when I explain it to non-scientific types, but Buzz (he actually changed his name) used to be called "Dr. Rendezvous" because he could figure orbital mechanics in his head, and he is one of my heroes!

You truly have the best graphics out there.

*_Former Boeing... your videos are well thought out, easy to understand, even for non-engineers..._* The ISS loses altitude due to friction with Air Molecules. Even at 250 miles up, some Air Molecules remain. NASA has to change speed and direction of ISS to get it back in it's normal orbit. *_ISS experiences 90 percent of Earth's Gravity even at 250 miles altitude..._*

Wow. Great explanation and animation

I now have more questions than I did before this video, but that's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for this video

Superb presentation! Liked & subscribed

Nice explainations and graphics.

Wow!!! Great video!!! Thank you very much.

❤Top tier explanation.❤ KSP has taught me a lot about rendezvous and docking. This stuff is really cool.

That was excellent, thank you!

Awesome explanations.

amazing,keepup the space side!

Ive never felt so smart. At one point in school our teacher played this video in class. After hours of KSP, orbital mechanica are just so simple to me, yet my entire class was completely dumbfounded that you cant just apply force in the direction you want to go.

Great explanation

Kerbal Space Program taught me this, but your explanation is great too.

You explained orbital mechanics in 10 minutes that my physics teacher can't in 2 and a half hours.

Sweet video! Just FYI, your animation actually has dragon burning the wrong way. It doesn’t use the super Draco’s for orbital maneuvering, but the Draco engines facing more towards the top of it

thanks! I can now understand how to make perfect orbit in spaceflight simulator

So good! Where is the rest of this 20 part series? 😆 Srsly though: Please more of these. Hohmann transfer, actual docking maneuvers, orbital injection, all of it. pleeeeaaase 🥺

Thank you! Visualizing math is pretty cool.

"Well cant you just fire your engines at earth instead of a prograde burn? Well lets do it and see what happens" I cant stress enough how important this is and how schools should be taking notes from this guy.

For n average person like me 🤓 this all was super clear and understandable 👍 Thanks 👏 👏

Fantastic!

Great video. Great job.

Great explanation, and the animations are super helpful! Is this the actual procedure they use to dock with the ISS?

I think this guy is criminally underrated.

Yay you're back

Just a caution for those looking to understand more carefully. There is a difference between absolute velocity and angular velocity. By doing a prograde thrust to apply force you are increasing the absolute velocity of the craft and decreasing the angular velocity. Another term used in the space industry is "ground trace" that applies here. If you take a straight line from the center of the earth (this gets more complicated as the earth is an oblate spheroid rather than spherical, but that is another topic) to the spacecraft at any given instant the point on the ground (earth's surface) that intersects this line will "appear" to speed up or slow down relative to time. This is a depiction of angular velocity. By increasing the area of the ellipse, the spacecraft must increase absolute velocity, which will expand its total distance from the earth short of escape velocity. In other words, prograde will always increase absolute velocity and decrease angular velocity (even if it does reach escape velocity--i.e. no longer in orbit) and, conversely, retrograde will always decrease absolute velocity and increase angular velocity (up until the point that the orbit remains outside of other physical forces--particulates of atmosphere, space junk, solar winds, and electromagnetic drag, etc.). For reference, geosynchronous and geostationary orbits are much "faster" and "higher" than other orbits, but the angular velocity is nearly zero (it appears to stand still in the sky from the ground. Much higher orbits are still possible, but they will then appear to go "backwards" (negative angular velocity). In other words, the earth's rotation will progress farther than the rotation of the satellite orbit, from an angular or ground observational perspective.

Amazing!

"forward takes you out , out takes you back . back takes you in , in takes you forward"

I was thinking about this, and got this video recommended

Well done.

Watching this knowing full well I still need to learn integrals and differential equations for my exam tomorrow

very well explained

I'm not sure if I would have flung myself far away first or not, but for sure I would have definitely ended up a brief fiery ball of beautiful brilliance streaming somewhere over Tajikistan, or maybe Texas! Can we have a moment of silence...

Awsome explanation and graphics. Briliant!!!! I wish you add something about rich ISS or any other object in space. I mean is not like cars break and accelerate to rich others. With orbits this dont work. Bside you rich the speed of ISS if you are not in time you can caught ISS*that is why need retrograde and prograde acceleration but when?) I would like see how to cach up the ISS and dock not just fallow it. And about launch (orbital inclination and diference betwen launch shoot and launch orbit with the same amount of fuel.(when go 90º up and nothing tangent speed))

KSP veteran here. Best gate to understand O.M.

Great video! Very insightful and helped me understand the physics. I am curious what software you used to animate this?

That was beautiful

Thanks sir, I seen many video but no one could reached me , I finnally understand this 😢

very underrated channel!!!!

last part was so cool

How is this guy have 42.6k subs when his vids are amazing

SFS made me understand orbital Mechanics but this is good!

I don’t do Kerbal, but keep up with ISS position for viewing opportunities. Can you post a video of the ISS orbit mechanics? Theres something else going on there besides just the earths daily spin causing apparent westward movement of ISS orbit.

Thanks a lot

So good.

#AnimationXplaned Excellent editing. Clear explanation. I don’t believe you. I’m still going to floor it. #holdmybeer

Hey can you make a video of Mars Orbiter Mission, Mangalyaan?

That is an extremely helpful video! I can't wait to master the maths behind all of these. I've independently thought out the retrograde and prograde burn(I came to know the name just from this video) and also the mathematics behind it!

I've flown Orbiter Sim and KSP for years, and I don't think I've ever done a radial burn (at least on purpose). They don't seem to be very useful for orbital rendezvous purposes.

Thanks!

I needed more videos.

Very interesting, although I’m not quite ready for a job with NASA, this video gave me a better understanding of how spacecraft orbit the Earth.

0:50 best explanation ever

Great vid

Please do a video explaining eh halo orbit of jwst. I don't understand how it orbits L2 the way it does, and I've watched numerous videos on it. I get how it oscillates up and down relative to the orbital plane of earth, but not how it goes faster than earth for a bit, and then slower, for the other part of its orbit around L2,

Love it

My favorite orbital mechanics game (Space Agency, on mobile) had it all wrong when it comes to radial burns. Now I see why my friends who are KSP nerds didn’t like it…

Is any of these related to hohmann transfer orbit concept?

smart people would say that him explained orbital mechanics legends would say that he made a KSP tutorial.

Larry Niven, _The Integral Trees_: "East takes you Out, Out takes you West, West takes you In, and In takes you East. Port and starboard bring you back." Where "East" is prograde, "West" is retrograde, port is antinormal, and starboard is normal. :)