area of the orbital ellipse for Earth is: 70,285,292,258,994,195.79 square kilometers, as determined in the first email of this thread.
Total number days in an Earth year is 365.24 days, which converts to: 24 hours per day times 365.24 days per year or 8765.76 hours per year. There are 60 minutes per hour times 8765.76 hours per year, or 525945.6 minutes per year. So, in an hour, the area swept by the planet Earth will be total area divided by 8765.76 hours or 8,018,162,972,633.77 square km. In a minute, the area swept by the planet Earth will be total area divided by 525945.6 or 133,636,049,543.8962 (Rounded after 4 decimal places) Now for the sad part. Initially, I thought I knew two sides of the triangle and didn't need to know the included angle between the two sides of the triangle formed by a line between the sun and Earth at start, and Earth after say, 1 minute in the future. Problem is, I don't know where the earth will be unless I solve for all triangles until area equals 133,636,049,543.8962 square kilometers. So, it does have to be a re-iterative process for each of the potential triangles until such a time as I find one triangle whose area = the targeted area I want on a per time unit basis (be the time unit in hours, minutes or seconds). I guess there is nothing to do but TRY the process out and see how it works, how long it takes to process, etc. I'm guessing that I will be working with VERY small angles throughout the process. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. :) _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
