I kind of understand that it’s like falling but falling past Earth but not really. Does it require power (in the case of artificial satellites, obviously the moon doesn’t have power) or does orbit last basically forever. If two things in orbit collide will they fall? If Deimos and Phobos somehow crash into each other will they just fall to Mars?
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Imagine you are skydiving over lava (ignoring air resistance). If you fall without any horizontal speed, you’ll hit the lava every time. But if I push you, you’ll miss. If I push you harder, you’ll miss more. If the lava pool gets bigger, I keep having to push harder and harder to save you.
Eventually if the lava covers all the Earth, I have to push you so hard that you loop all the way back to where you started. That’s orbit.
Note: I didn’t need to add any speed after the initial push, so when you ignore air resistance, orbit doesn’t need power.
But in reality, air does exist, and it slows down our satellites, meaning they do need power, but it’s not a lot.
As for Phobos and Deimos, it depends on *how* they hit each other. A head on collision would make them lose orbit, but it all depends on how fast they’re going after the collision.
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