Why is there a velocity associated with escaping from earth’s atmosphere? If an object were to fly from the surface of the planet at 1 m/s without any change in acceleration would it not eventually end up in space?
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Escape velocity doesn’t have anything to do with the atmosphere. It’s the speed at which you can escape earth’s gravity well without additional energy.
Getting to space is relatively easy, going straight up you need 1400m/s of velocity to reach 100km of height(ignoring atmospheric drag). Staying in orbit is much harder. At 100km altitude, you need to be going sideways at 7850m/s in order to stay in orbit. Any slower and you just fall right back down.
If you increase that 7.8 km/s to 11.2 km/s, that’s escape velocity, and you’ll leave the earth behind and end up in orbit around the sun.
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