Weird idea about orbits...

[christo4_99]

it is known that a circle can be drawn with a series of straight lines.when travelling in an arc the sharper the radius the more inertia is lost.my thought is in question form: is it possible that in effect because of a minute radius of arc the planets do not "know" they are travelling in an arc and therby are not affected by inertial loss?kinda like the earth,being very large,does not know that it's round...

[GestaltO]

without being able to "precisely" measure diameters at all possible cross sections of the planet it is impossible to say for CERTAIN that the earth is actually a perfect sphere. therefore your theory may have merit because the planet may actually not be "round"

[zerotensor]

I don't know what you mean by "inertia loss".  For circular orbits in about a central field source, there is no "inertia loss" at any radius.  The linear momentum vector changes its direction continuously, but it does not change in magnitude.  For elliptical orbits, the momentum of the orbiting particle (or planet) undergoes a periodic oscillation.  The planet does not need to "do work" to steer itself on its path around the sun.  Instead, it freely falls along a geodesic in spacetime, just as satellites which orbit earth are continuously falling toward earth--yet their inertia causes them to continually miss their target.

[christo4_99]

the smaller the radius the more inertial loss...what i'm proposing is that perhaps it is incorrect to assume that inertial loss is a universal phenomina and that the sheer size of something could possibly exclude it from this in that: since gravity corrects the orbit and does not interfere with the direction at 90 degrees it may not be "felt" as inertial loss.the  mass "thinks" it is traveling in a straight line.

[christo4_99]

ok...i see what you are saying.what i am saying is that when something is moving in a straight line in space it will not lose velocity...and if it is caused to move off that path into an orbit by gravity it loses velocity in that it has lost some of it's original momentum.if the change is not so abrupt(large arc radius) then:i am proposing that there may be no "intertial loss"