Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a fine, workmanlike evaluation of the stability of a triad of satellites.  It uses different ephemerises and includes effects of earth, Venus and Jupiter.  A recommendation for orbital insertion is obtained.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Occasional word choice issues

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I liked the paper, which tackles an important subject. I believe only minor adjustements are needed

Here is the list of observations

At line 22-23 you state that gravitational wave research would elucidate the dark energy problem. This very general and ambitious statement at least deserves a reference more specific than just the LISA proposal. Your ref. 1 is not adequate to this point.

At line 24 the more appropriate reference for the discovery is actually the famous B.P. Abbott et al., Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger, PRL 116 (2016) 061102.

Around line 52-53 you indicate that the dominant role is played by the Earth's gravitational perturbation. Question: did you use the full power of DE440 (including the effect of the nucleus rotation with respect to the Earth mantle?)

In Fig. 2 it is not clear to me why you are using the letter I when you are plotting an acceleration (the third figure)

Overall: the written insets in the plots are too small to be read easily

In the title of paragraph 3.1 it says "...of the solar system stars". Please change it to "...of the solar system bodies" or something like that.

At paragraph 3.3, I believe you should specify that you are "adding" the influence of Venus and Jupiter the the one of the Eart, right? In other words equation (9) extends equation (8), right?

But then...in your discussion in lines 161 to 163... (and fig. 7) you say that you are just considering the effect of Venus and Jupiter. But equation (9) also contains the Earth term, the term i=3! Please clarify this.

On the contrary, fig. 8 is clearly explained.

It is not clear to me what is the zero in the time scale of fig. 9. Is it the 1st of July 2032?

What is the difference between figures 7 and 10? It is not clear to me from the text. Ok in figure 10 you have the physics when the Table 2 parameters are chosen. But then... in figure 7 what are the used parameters?

One final point, I believe is missing: what are the influence of this various orbital corrections to a gravitational wave measurement? This is in my opinion a key question. I understand that (perhaps) this is not the spirit of the paper... but if you could add at least a general statement on this subject, it would make the paper much more substantial!

Let me insist a bit on this: the interested reader (including myself) is really asking himself: how about the measurement they plan to do? How they will be affected by these effect?

 

 

Congratulation for the nice paper

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It is mostly ok... just a very minor edition from an expert typewriter.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The two sentences at the beginning of the article is  so generic that it risk to be wrong or misunderstood. In addition they are out of context of the original problem treated in the article. 

Thus I ask to delete in the manuscript  from line 20 to the beginning of line 22  and the reference [1].

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf