The ISS is around 400km above us. A rocket needs a speed of at least 8km per second to get to space. If we cut out the acceleration part it could in theory reach the ISS in around 50 seconds. Even if we factor in the acceleration part etc. it should still be very quick up there. Yet the fastest possible time to get to the ISS is 4 hours. That would be an average speed of 100Km/h which is way slower than the speed of the rocket after a few seconds. Why the long journey?
In: Planetary Science
You’re trying to find a needle in a haystack, except we know exactly where the needle is – it’s moving at 4.76 miles per second towards Earth. Matching the position and speed of the ISS’s orbit is the time consuming part. It’s hard to launch a rocket into orbit, it’s even harder to do it with exact accuracy relational to another object.
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