3 ms·
Imagine one of those games where you put a nickel in and watch it circle around a slope until it falls into a hole (for charity!). What's happening is the nicke
by ecto 8y ago
Imagine one of those games where you put a nickel in and watch it circle around a slope until it falls into a hole (for charity!). What's happening is the nickel's forward momentum being lost, resulting in succumbing to the gravity well.
Launching a rocket to orbit is like starting from the bottom of the well, and spinning around the slope really fast until the nickel is returned to your hand.
- cecilpl2 8y agoThat's the best ELI5 analogy for orbit I've ever heard!
- nojvek 8y agoXkcd explains orbital speed in a much detailed explanation. https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/ The gist is that gravity pulls you. To go to space you have to escape gravity. Even if you go thousands of miles above earth, gravity will still pull you. To counteract gravity, you need to go really fast sideways. When you spin a ball attached to a string, the faster you spin, the more the ball pulls the string away from your hand. If you spin it really really fast, the string breaks eventually and the ball flies away. The string is gravity.