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What is the largest (most massive) known body in the solar system that a professional pitcher could throw a baseball off of, i.e. that has an escape velocity lower than ~102 MPH? (45.33 m/s)

Keith Pinson
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    CSPICE has both the gravitational mass parameter GM (proportional to mass) and radius of many solar system bodies, which should be sufficient to compute escape velocity. So, if anyone wants to do this, you could get a fairly complete answer. I may do this myself at some point. –  Feb 26 '20 at 17:53

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Assuming an object with the same density as earth (not very good approximation) then a spherical object with a radius of 2.5 km, would have an escape velocity of about 96 mph. A velocity reached by several MLB pitchers. There are probably several asteroids with a radius near this.

Natsfan
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enter image description here source

I don't think this is complete - there may be objects between Phobos and Vesta. Phobos and Vesta have too little mass to be rounded under their own gravity, so the escape velocity may depend on where you are standing.

Keith McClary
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  • "I don't think this is complete - there may be objects between Phobos and Vesta" is a bit of an understatement! This is a hard question to answer; unless someone happens to know where to find complete tables with estimated masses and sizes it will require a lot of work to hunt those down. However such a big hole between 25 and 800 MPH I don't think this addresses the OP's question "What is the largest known body in the solar system..." very well. – uhoh Feb 21 '20 at 02:23
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    @uhoh List of Solar System objects by size, but there are large uncertainties for the masses. – Keith McClary Feb 21 '20 at 03:10
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    Given a choice between doing what I'm supposed to be doing today and playing with a table of numbers for hours, I'm always going to go for the latter. Thanks! – uhoh Feb 21 '20 at 03:14