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
ELI5: if you wanted to board a moving train from a car, you wouldn’t just slam into it, that would be the fastest way to get to it but it’s not what you want. You would slowly start to approach it until you are going at the same speed, then you can just hop on.
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