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Recently, Anderson et al. published an empirical prediction formula for the so far unexplained parts of the velocity changes of spacecrafts during Earth flybys. In the framework of a perturbational approach, we show that there is no velocity-independent force field of the Earth - in addition to its Newtonian gravity field - that is to reproduce this formula. However, we give examples for fields modeling exactly the flyby anomaly which are quadratic functions of the velocity of the spacecraft.

We discuss the geometry of timelike surfaces (two-dimensional submanifolds) in a Lorentzian manifold and its interpretation in terms of general relativity. A classification of such surfaces is presented which distinguishes four cases of special algebraic properties of the second fundamental form from the generic case. In the physical interpretation a timelike surface can be viewed as the worldsheet of a ``track'', and timelike curves in this surface can be viewed as the worldlines of observers who are bound to the track, like someone sitting in a roller-coaster car. With this interpretation, our classification turns out to be closely related to (i) the visual appearance of the track, (ii) gyroscopic transport along the track, and (iii) inertial forces perpendicular to the track. We illustrate our general results with timelike surfaces in the Kerr-Newman spacetime., 12 pages, 1 figure; to appear in M Scherfner and M. Plaue (eds.): "Advances in Lorentzian Geometry"