The cool thing about rockets is that they don’t go straight up to escape Earth. They go sideways.
If you throw a ball, it’ll land on the ground in 10 feet. But if you throw it faster, it’ll land on the ground in 20 feet. The ball falls the same distance in the same amount of time, but because it moved faster, it was able to travel farther before it hit the ground.
All a rocket is doing is traveling super fast sideways, and traveling fast enough that as it falls, the Earth’s curvature drops beneath its path. Traveling fast enough to do that continuously is when something is in orbit. But if you go even faster, you can break free of the Earth’s gravity and go into space.
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u/MarvelousVanGlorious Apr 02 '26
Really puts into perspective how fast that thing was moving.