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

1.40K viewsOtherPlanetary Science

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

In: Planetary Science

39 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because you can not go to the ISS straight up in a line. You also have to match it’s orbital velocity, which is really high. Due to how orbital mechanics work, you can also not just increase your velocity much higher to get there quickly and then brake to match the velocity. That would need much much more fuel, which you just can not take with you if you launch the rocket. So the rocket launches in way that only part of the orbit would reach the ISS and then increases the speed to match the velocity. And for security reasons this is done in very slow steps. So that when the rocket and the ISS finally meet, their relative velocity to each other is in a safe range for docking.

edit: Maybe a good example would be if you want to jump onto a moving train. You can not just jump onto it by jumping down from a bridge of something. The velocity of the train compared to yours is so high that you will not be able to land in a stable pose and get thrown around.

But if you drive with a car or another train next to it at the same velocity, you can just jump over with only a minimal risk.

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