One of my favorite papers asks the opposite question: Why do Earth satellites stay up? https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244 https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244 It tur

One of my favorite papers asks the opposite question: Why do Earth satellites stay up? https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244 https://arxiv.org/abs/1309.5244 It turns out that the orbit of most satellites would be unstable were it not for the quadrupole moment of the Earth's gravitational field which detunes certain orbital resonances.