Orbital Inclination Change - Inclination Entangled With Other Orbital Elements

Inclination Entangled With Other Orbital Elements

An important subtlety of performing an inclination change is that Keplerian orbital inclination is defined by the angle between ecliptic North and the vector normal to the orbit plane, (i.e. the angular momentum vector). This means that inclination is always positive and is entangled with other orbital elements primarily the argument of periapsis which is in turn connected to the longitude of the ascending node. This can result in two very different orbits with precisely the same inclination.

Read more about this topic:  Orbital Inclination Change

Famous quotes containing the words inclination, entangled and/or elements:

    A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    Some of these men had become abstrusely entangled with the spying departments of other nations and would give an amusing jump if you came from behind and tapped them on the shoulder.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    It is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal, man-respecting principles which we call by the comprehensive term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting, class-favoring elements which we group together under that silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean that, it means nothing.
    Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921)