Eli5| If you were to drive the *straightest* highway at *immaculate* speeds, would you be able to visualize the curvature of the earth?

Question

Assuming you wouldn’t explode from going mach ba-gillion in a Camry, and other things barred by a neat thing called physics, if you were going like a hundred thousand miles in a minute, or whatever it takes to clear the entire U.S in an hour. Would it all be straight? Or would the road comically start bending downwards?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Rockets leave the Earth by going fast enough. If you could somehow get your car going fast enough, which typically requires a rocket anyway, you’d go into some kind of orbit, the shape of which would depend on your speed relative to the escape velocity. From a high enough orbit, you’d definitely see the curvature.