Suppose that the technology exists for a spacecraft to launch with low velocity. Horizontal velocity is 0 and after brief acceleration the vertical velocity is constant at 30m/s. After 4 days the craft reaches the high-earth orbit and the propulsion is turned off. What would happen then?
In: 4
An object with the trajectory you described would never reach orbit. It would reach high altitude, but what it wouldn’t ever do is start orbiting the Earth. It would just fall back down just like if you shot a gun directly upwards and tracked the bullet.
E: depending on the properties of the object and where it launched from (and what exactly you mean by 30 m/s straight up), when it fell back down it would almost certainly not fall down exactly where it began. It’s hard to say what exactly would happen because the problem is not fully specified.
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