Proper copper orrery

Somewhat inspired by "Dog Orrery". The discussions therein made it clear that ordinary orreries lack astronomical verisimilitude, operating as they do with circular orbits in a single plane.

So.

The MaxCo Proper Copper Orrery Company of Oregon (currently seeking venture capital and, indeed, a potential customer) is working on a scheme to create an actual-reality orrery in orbit.

We are starting with a one-ton sun, which will of course be painted yellow as it is meant to be. This will be put into orbit in a quiet part of the solar system, as free as possible from the gravitational tugs of real planets. (By keeping the whole thing fairly small, we hope to minimize tidal forces.)

The planets will be made to scale in both size and mass (using various combinations of lead, copper and aerospace-grade papier mache), and each will be tenderly launched on an orbit around the sun, assuming a start-date of Jan04 1643, midnight GMT.

Setting the scale-moons (each individually carved by former jewellers) on precisely the right courses will be phenomenally difficult, but we are working on that, and are 100% confident that we might succeed.

We haven't entirely solved the problems associated with Saturn, and we aren't even thinking about the rings around Uranus yet, but rest assured that a solution will be found.

The fleet-minded amongst you will have realized that, with a 1- ton sun, and with distances to scale, the speed of the orrery will be....well, OK, no point stating the obvious, I know.

[STOP PRESS: The technicians at The MaxCo Proper Copper Orrery Company of Oregon have just woken up to the principle of reversibility. We have therefore decided to set everything moving in a retrograde manner, so that the Proper Copper Orrery will, in fact, recapitulate the past history of the solar system, running backwards from 1643.]