No. You'd avoid friction. You may be able to accelerate faster, meaning less waste (as you won't be fighting gravity for as long). And you'd gain potential ener

No. You'd avoid friction. You may be able to accelerate faster, meaning less waste (as you won't be fighting gravity for as long). And you'd gain potential energy by already being up so high. But there's still a minimum amount of energy you need to get to orbital velocity. If you didn't burn fuel to match speeds, you'd smack into the robot, which will be moving at orbital velocity. See, the way a satellite stays "up" is by moving really fast in a straight line perpendicular to the earth's surface, like this: satellite earth ^-> falls "down" | / | | d-0-b | | \ The satellite "falls" towards the Earth, but it's moving so fast that this "falling" just becomes part of a giant circle, around the earth. If it was any faster, it would shoot away (or move to a higher orbit). If it was slower, it would fall down to a lower orbit, and if it was too slow it would hit the atmosphere where it slows down even more (eventually crashing down).