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. But Golden Rule is over five
kilometers long and it orbits around a center of mass only a little over two
thousand kilometers away. Surely, that's only one part in four hundred- but it's
a square law and there's no friction and the effect goes on forever; it's
locked. The tidal lock Earth has on Luna is only four times that-much less if
you bear in mind that Luna is round as a tennis ball whereas Golden Rule is
shaped more like a cigar.
Golden Rule has another orbital peculiarity. It orbits from pole to pole
(okay, everybody knows that-sony) but also this orbit, elliptical but almost a
perfect circle, has that circle fully open to the Sun, i.e., the plane of its
orbit faces the Sun, always, while Luna rotates under it. Like Foucault's
pendulum. Like the spy satellites patrolling Earth.
Or, to put it another way. Golden Rule simply follows the terminator, the
day-and-night line on Luna, around and around and around, endlessly-never in
shadow. (Well- In shadow at Lunar eclipses, if you want to pick nits. But only
then.)
This configuration is only metastable; it is not locked. Everything tugs at
it, even Saturn and Jupiter. But there is a little pilot computer in Golden Rule
that does nothing but make sure Golden Rule's orbit is always full face to the
Sun-thereby giving Old MacDonald's Farm its bountiful crops. It doesn't even
take power to speak of, just the tiniest nudges against the tiny deviations
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