# Orbit & Gravity

Canonical: https://manyspace.aporia.systems/tools/orbit
Updated: 2026-10-13

Every launch buys a fate: too slow falls home, just right loops forever, too fast never returns. Aim the arrow and scrub the flight.

## 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.

## Related tools

- [Projectile Motion Lab](https://manyspace.aporia.systems/tools/projectile-motion)