Orbit & Gravity
Every launch buys a fate: too slow falls home, just right loops forever, too fast never returns. Aim the arrow and scrub the flight.
Tip: start from Circular, trim the speed down a touch, and watch the pad become the orbit's high point.
Try this
- Buy each fate. Click through Circular, Elliptical, Escape, and Fall inward — four arrows, four destinies, one physics.
- Find the edge of escape. From Elliptical, nudge the speed up in 0.05 steps until the orbit line reads “escaping”: you just measured escape velocity by hand.
- Weaken the world. Switch to Moon-like pull and relaunch Circular: the same arrow now escapes, because circular speed fell with gravity.
How to read the flight
The cyan path is the whole flight, precomputed from your launch: position, velocity, and gravity integrated step by step. Scrub the timeline and the orbiter rides it — the cyan arrow is live velocity, the slate arrow the local pull of gravity.
Energy decides the fate before the first step: negative loops forever, positive leaves and never returns. Circular speed is the reference — launch slower and the far side dips, faster and it balloons, past escape velocity and the path never closes.
Orbits are just falling well
Satellites, moons, and planets all ride the same trade you just scrubbed — ManySpace teaches mechanics the way you just flew this one: aim it, then watch what the physics does.