Measuring sun's true direction

Backing up to the last post by Jeremy I want to ask how do you know these things? There seems be be nothing that has been measured and all I find are calculated orbits and details that are very accurate. Are you are assuming things are as well ordered as you say or have you data I don't know how to access?

From omniscient Jeremy:

Mechanic,

I can't figure out what your problem is. Orbital motion is well understood and planetary motion in the solar system is nailed down pretty much to a gnats ass.

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You probably saying all these to convince yourself Jeremy. You're not convincing me cause I've done my homework. What is nailed down to pretty much a gnats [sic]? Do you know of the three-body problem? Something like 18 first order differential equations and only 12 integrals of motion to solve them? Not only we cannot say anything in the context of our babbage sciece about three or more planetary bodies but I doubt we can even say anything about two bodies. Le'ts see: two-body problem is 12 first order differential eqautions and the claim is there are 12 integrals of motion. Well, I suspect four of these integrala were manufactured in some "physics lab" to convince us there is a closed form solution otherwise they should've thrown the whole model in the trash can.

I need no convincing Jeremy. If you have substantial claims to make on the contary please do so. I cannot accept arguments like "it is so because it is so and you better know it is so because everyone else knows it is so" This ain't elementary school. These is serious questioning going on around here. Do not underestimate anyone in this threads.

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Backing up to the last post by Jeremy I want to ask how do you know these things? There seems be be nothing that has been measured and all I find are calculated orbits and details that are very accurate. Are you are assuming things are as well ordered as you say or have you data I don't know how to access?
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I am curious, do you believe that NASA has been successfully getting their probes into position after numerous passbys of planetary and solar bodies by spinning a roulette wheel on their calculator? We have been timing radio signals from probes for years to get accurate triangulations of distance. I have no special data to offer, you will have to go to your local university and dig through specialized journals to find all the boring tables of data you are looking for.

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You probably saying all these to convince yourself Jeremy. You're not convincing me cause I've done my homework. What is nailed down to pretty much a gnats [sic]?
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Orbital parameters for the planetary bodies are pretty well known considering the size of the system involved. They seem to know it well enough to run computer orrerys thousands of years forward and back.

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Do you know of the three-body problem? Something like 18 first order differential equations and only 12 integrals of motion to solve them? Not only we cannot say anything in the context of our babbage sciece about three or more planetary bodies but I doubt we can even say anything about two bodies.
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Absolute nonsense. NASA must have real dunderheads out there using that bogus celestial mechanics to get probes in position fairly accurately after numerous encounters with other bodies millions of miles apart. For a mechanic you seem to make light of practical working results from theory. Yes, in a mathematical theoretical sense there is much to consider but real engineers don't let theory get in the way of practical results. I can't predict the long term history of gas molecules either but thermodynamics seems to work pretty well in spite of that don't you think?

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I need no convincing Jeremy. If you have substantial claims to make on the contary please do so. I cannot accept arguments like "it is so because it is so and you better know it is so because everyone else knows it is so" This ain't elementary school. These is serious questioning going on around here. Do not underestimate anyone in this threads.
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I am not saying "it is so because it is so" any more than you are saying "it ISN'T so because I say it isn't so". You ask questions like why the Earth speeds up and slows down in its orbit but you do not consider the reference frame from which you ask this question. The ancients looked up at Mars and wondered why it went along its orbit, went backwards then forwards again. Is there some mysterious force making it do that or does it just look that way when you make the Earth the center of your system? Make the Sun the center and you have to deal with exchange of "potential" and "kinetic energy" and discussion of things "falling" or "specific mechanical energy". This is terminology forced by the system you are referencing to and can't be got away from just by saying it seems like nonsense to you.

Jeremy, you are missing my point with your defence of NASA. NASA is fine and I understand the points you make now you need to see that the data does not exist even though you believe it does exist. The only way you can be accurate with important details is knowing the exact measurements and since this can be accomplished with a little focus and effort the data should be aquired. This in no way will change how time is kept or where Jupiter is but it will clear up a few issues about gravity that are pending. Even the solar constant is poorly modeled now and can be fixed to be much more useful.

From Jeremy:

Make the Sun the center and you have to deal with exchange of "potential" and "kinetic energy" and discussion of things "falling" or "specific mechanical energy". This is terminology forced by the system you are referencing to and can't be got away from just by saying it seems like nonsense to you.

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If your model of "potential" and "kinetic energy" is any good then I expect you having the closed form solution of the three-body problem on my desk by tomorrow. Lol^n (I'm just kidding...)

I'm pretty sure that you can't even derive a reliable solution for the two-body problem irrespectively of the reference frame you choose unless you assume:

1. Planetary bodies are perfect spheres
2. Speed of gravity is infinite
3. orbital plane is known (ascendant mode)
4. and much much more...

Back in the time when I took an Orbital Mechanics course in graduate school after the end of a lecture I turned to my professor (a realy nice Russian fellow, maybe a defector I never asked) and said to him: This is all crap, isn't it? He turned around, looked at me with a smilling face and replied: Yes, it really is, but I have to make a living... and if you say I ever told you this (crap) I'll deny it. Then we went to the cafeteria where he started talking about all these wild theories they were working on when he was still in Russia, but no details.

Do you have any idea how many probes NASA has lost?

A challenge lies before me. I have been criticized by a scientist at a gravimeter company for trying to measure the rate of propagation of gravitational attraction, since he claims everything works out fine when we assume it is c. I have already used three examples to justify a gravity speed test: 1) orbit calculations do not concern themselves with gravitational delay even if the parent body is moving on a curved course (e.g., earth satellites), 2) the 20 arc seconds lead in the direction of sun's gravity relative to its visible position, and 3) the ability to overlook GR effects in the time signal interpretations for observers at different places on the earth with different relative motions to the same satellites.

Here are some quotes from the reply that I have no response for:
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> "... You may want to contact Eric Adelberger at the University of Washington or Riley Newman at the university of Santa Cruz since these guys do this for a living....
"...[You must] design an experiment that carefully guards against possible sources of systematic errors that will fool the experimenter. The reputable gravity experimenters that do this are few and far between but they are the only ones whose results I tend to take seriously. Most of the others I find simply do some weird experiment and then get some weird result....
"...Finally, I disagree with your conclusion that NASA does not take relativity into account. I have worked on Ashby’s program of calculating orbits using the Post-Newtonian Parameterized Metric when I was a graduate student, and general relativity was definitely important in these calculations. General relativity is used in GPS calculations as well."<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote> In an earlier message from the same scientist, I got the following response to my proposal to see if the "speed of gravity" is c or not:
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote> I know there are lots of people wanting to measure the speed of gravity ... The fact of the matter is that it would be very difficult to believe that there is anything wrong with the way gravity is calculated because we would measure large deviations with gravimeters, planets would collide, and space travel (even the amount we have already done) would not be possible. Even GPS would not work as well as it does. There is no need to make a bad measurement of the speed of gravity. It is doubtful that it is interesting to make a high precision measurement of the speed of gravity and as you point out it is difficult. <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote> I seek a simple way to initiate a conversation that doesn’t get these kinds of reactions. I thought the orbit calculations and the direction of sun’s gravity would pique some interest but instead he fixated on my GR and GPS comment. Does anyone know how to substantiate or refer someone to the results of the U.S. Naval Observatory or to the Development Ephemerides of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that show the non-alignment of sun gravity and light? I understand the procedure from the topmost posts in this thread but I don’t know a reference for the original work.
Thanks, and sorry for the long post.