I can’t wrap my mind around why you need to be going a certain speed to escape the pull from earth’s gravity.
In my mind I envision 5 people playing tug of war with a bull. The people are exerting a pulling force but the bull would be able to overcome it. Let’s say the humans never get tired but the bull will be able to exceed the forces pulling it back and continue to move forward. That can happen at 22mph or 2mph.
Outside of it being severely inefficient (I’m guessing), why can’t an object just travel upwards at low speeds and eventually overcome the pull of the earth because it has lots of… torque (for lack of a better word)?
In: Physics
> Outside of it being severely inefficient (I’m guessing)
Your guess is correct, it’s very inefficient so with current rocket technology if you tried to go up slowly you would run out of fuel before getting far enough away from Earth, and would just fall back
Instead you go up as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of gravity pulling you down as quickly as possible. Once you’re going faster than escape velocity the engine can be shut down and you coast the rest of the way away from Earth.
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