eli5: I’ve heard orbit described as continuously falling past or missing the Earth, how then do objects in geosynchronous orbit above a single point not fall out of the sky?
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Lot of people focused on the “geosynchronous” aspect, but I’m going to shorthand an explanation I read regarding the “falling” part to help that make sense.
Imagine for a second you shot a cannon. The ball will go a good distance and then fall to earth. If you shoot it with even more energy, it will start faster and go farther. But it’s still falling.
Now, picture shooting the ball out of the cannon so fast that it starts to fall, but by the time it starts to fall it’s gotten to the horizon, and it falls in an arc that matches the curvature of the earth – it would miss the earth, but just keep continually falling.
As some have said, close to earth it would have to go REALLY fast to do that. But higher up, it’s got some more room to fall, and doesn’t have to go quite as fast. This is what “orbit” is – continually falling to earth.
“Geosynchronous” just means it’s at that place where it’s high enough over the earth, but not too high, such that the speed it needs to go to continually fall is the same rotational speed as the earth – so you’re in “synch” with it. You’d have to be traveling in the same direction as the earth is rotating.
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