At the end of this tutorial, you should be able to define a hypothetical gravitational system, and graph the paths of the bodies involved over a custom time frame.
This sounds complicated, because usually physics relating to space is considered hard. But it's not that hard! If someone has already broken down the algorithm (which I will do), you just have to understand the rough theory. Then it's no harder than writing a bot. If you've ever studied kinematics, you should also be able to follow along with the physics.
This is also the first in a series of posts. I will be solving this problem again using C++ instead of python, and introducing some High Performance Computing techniques.
If you don't care about theory, you can also skip straight to the program. An intro to python can be found here.
ELI15 Gravitational Theory
We'll start with the difference between weight and mass. Mass is a measure of the matter that makes up an object, and weight is how much force it feels from gravity. So your weight on the Moon and on Earth are different, but your mass is the same. That's because the Moon has less gravity dragging you down
