11 ms·
It doesn't speak to the technical difficulty, but his example, and all of yours, help put the distance into context that we can intuitively understand. It's def
by reitzensteinm 14y ago
It doesn't speak to the technical difficulty, but his example, and all of yours, help put the distance into context that we can intuitively understand. It's definitely helpful.
- stcredzero 14y agoThe kinetic energy of 1 kg moving at orbital velocity is about 31 megajoules. The potential energy of the same kilogram suspended 100km overhead is less than a megajoule. Most of the difficulty to orbit isn't distance, it's the amount of energy it takes to get something moving that fast. Actually it's much, much worse than that, because it's actually the change in momentum involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation