why when the international space station is only 250miles away does it take at least 4 hours to get there?

Question

I’m going to be very disappointed if the rockets top out at 65mph.

In: Planetary Science

Answer 1

It’s orbiting thousands of miles an hour so if you simply fire a rocket straight up into its path, you’ll have a gigantic crash. You basically have to chase down its orbit. That means inclining are an angle, rather than simply going up vertically, and then accelerating to about the speed of the ISS and intercepting it’s orbit. That’s the part that takes 4 hours. You’re traveling thousands of miles to actually intercept the orbit.