You're missing an awful lot of astronomy if you think that orbital mechanics is the sum total of astronomical knowledge. There's no earth-bound laboratory that

You're missing an awful lot of astronomy if you think that orbital mechanics is the sum total of astronomical knowledge. There's no earth-bound laboratory that can create the hundreds of Teslas magnetic fields found in the sun; there's no earthbound laboratory where one can see high-mass effects like gravitational lensing; there's no earth bound laboratory that can explain or even observe the existence/absence of dark matter. Astronomy is much, much more than dynamics.