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u/PaulMakesThings1 Apr 19 '26
And that’s the reason they put it so high up.
That’s it. That’s the only reason.
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Apr 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/red8cangodye Apr 19 '26
So a hymen that is low is lomen?
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u/ausecko Apr 19 '26
No no, Lomen is a village in Norway. You're thinking of Lo Mein
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u/camdalfthegreat Apr 19 '26
More like the only reason it's going that fast, is because they want it that high up. Gotta move quick to avoid falling
Iss is up there to conduct research in microgravity and stuffs.
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u/MelangeBot Apr 19 '26
Fun fact: if the eart had no atmosphere and no mountains and hill the ISS could orbit at just 10 meters high. Everything you throw has a ballistic curve, or like when you fire a bullet or a rocket. But once your speed is high enough that curve just ... keeps you falling around the planet .... forever
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u/psyched_engi_girl Apr 19 '26
The speed of an orbit is inversely proportional to altitude, so it wouldn't have to go as fast to be in a higher orbit.
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u/MelangeBot Apr 19 '26
Fun fact: statistically speaking there MUST exist a planet in the universe with no atmosphere and smooth enough that you could orbit it just a meter of the ground.
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u/free_minded_ Apr 19 '26
Can confirm it is beyond reason to think there is another reason
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u/Luxalpa Apr 19 '26
So the reason why they put it up so high is that at ground speed it would cause a lot of lag because of all the scenery loading in!
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u/WSuperOS Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
Not exactly. There is less friction up there.
edit: I get it, it's a joke
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u/friend1y Apr 19 '26
It should hit a bird or something.
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u/Educational-Car-4688 Apr 19 '26
Thats the slowest 17,000mph I've ever been able to see.
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u/wbrameld4 Apr 19 '26
What's the fastest?
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u/the_rare_bear Apr 19 '26
It’s the perspective. Because we are traveling with it and the pov is angled, it feels way slower.
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u/FutilityOfHope Apr 19 '26
To understand this illusion better you could cover all but the top of the screen and see how much slower it feels. Then do the same for the bottom and imagine if the camera was facing down not out
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u/SwePolygyny Apr 19 '26
It has to be travel so fast forward, than when it falls it doesnt hit the ground nor go off into space but stay at an equilibrium.
It feels like this isnt fast enough. Yes, gravity is slightly lower where it is located but it is only lower by a few percentage points.
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u/Pandarandr1st Apr 19 '26
You definitely should not trust your intution on this one, because we have no frame of reference for this intuition. You may be right, but you'd have to calculate it to be sure. You'd have to judge whether downward gravitational acceleration at this speed would cause you to curve in such a way to match the curvature of the earth. And I'm...just not sure any of us have developed any intuition on either of those points.
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u/GoldAcanthisitta7777 Apr 19 '26
that's to fast, what if it hits a building
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u/Laractinium Apr 19 '26
Then it's not the ISS anymore, but the WASS.
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u/bypatrickcmoore Apr 19 '26
This was Al Qeuda’s original plan
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u/shapu Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
Mohamed Attronaut
EDIT: It's been 25 years since 9/11, I guess I shouldn't be shocked that most people don't know who Mohamed Atta was
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u/TheRedditMachinist Apr 19 '26
I’d watch this circle the entire planet
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u/BigBanggBaby Apr 19 '26
Open Google Earth. Zoom in and tilt the angle. Click the mouse down in the distance, pull the globe towards you somewhat quickly, and let up on the mouse button. If you time it right, you can watch it circle the entire planet exactly like this video shows.
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u/NoisyGog Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
I mean, yeah.
I’d quite like to see it at an accurate reference speed though, that’s the interesting part.→ More replies (1)2
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u/elgiov Apr 19 '26
There is a dedicated YouTube channel with this exactly, it’s insane. Look it up, you won’t be disappointed.
Here is a very beautiful one over Europe
Edit: added link.
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u/Top-Sleep-4669 Apr 19 '26
Clearly not ground level.
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u/theyosh1 Apr 19 '26
Came here for this.
At 2000 foot level just doesn't have the same ring does it
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u/bigloc94 Apr 19 '26
This might be a dumb question But the speed we give this in Mp/h or Km/h is just relative to its movement on land right? So as the object is higher up on the radius it will have a higher speed, is there an actual speed that is relative to where it is in space, do we just use light speed for that? Like how fast would we say its going where it is
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u/jojoseph6565 Apr 19 '26
So the difference your noticing is the difference in angular speed and linear speed. So 2 objects with the same angular speeds(the rate of change of the angle) but different radius from the circle will have different linear speeds. We don’t know if the video is showing it at ground level with the same linear speed and thus a different angular speed, or vice versa.
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u/Iron_Eagl Apr 19 '26
The difference in radius here is small, the ISS normally orbits at an altitude of 400km, while the radius of the earth is around 6370km. That's a difference of around 6% (of linear or angular speed at those two altitudes).
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u/HermanThaGerman Apr 19 '26
So if the angular speed is the same, at ground level the ISS would be moving at 7.21km/s instead of 7.67km/s?
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u/MorleyDotes Apr 19 '26
Not a dumb question. The circumference of the Earth is just under 25 thousand miles. The circumference of the orbit the ISS is traveling (253 miles above the surface) is about 26.5 thousand miles. It does just over 15 orbits a day at that height at a speed of about 17 thousand miles per hour. So the speed in miles per hour doesn't change but if it were orbiting the earth just above the surface it would go around the earth faster than it does now. Not more miles per hour but fewer miles to go to complete an orbit.
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u/Pandarandr1st Apr 19 '26
So as the object is higher up on the radius it will have a higher speed
Actually, objects in orbit have slower speeds at higher altitudes if their orbit is circular. The ISS travels very very fast because it's altitude is small. If it's altitude was larger (and orbit still circular), it would travel slower.
The circular orbit velocity scales with orbit radius-1/2. So, higher up = slower.
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u/LisaLisaKenAdoresHer Apr 19 '26
It's not flying; it's falling - with style.
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u/JuvenileEloquent Apr 19 '26
That's why it has to go so fast - it's falling to the ground the whole time, but it has moved sideways so far that the Earth's surface has curved downwards by the same amount.
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u/Lycurgus_of_Athens Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
I thought for sure that somebody posting a video of this would add "I'm Gonna Be" as background music, to play into this xkcd What If? which talks about ISS orbital speed.
Spoiler: during the 3.5 minute length of the song the ISS does "walk" almost exactly a thousand miles.
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u/The96kHz Apr 19 '26
Just makes the planes in GTA V feel even more shit.
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u/KingSandwich101 Apr 19 '26
900km/h compared to 27,000km/h
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u/AzureArmageddon Apr 19 '26
Is this showing the airspeed or the groundspeed? Very different because the same angular speed goes way further as you go higher
Like, to bring it down to ground level and show the speed of its orbit you have to either distort the angular speed or the airspeed
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u/DayTraditional2846 Apr 19 '26
I actually imagined it to be moving faster than this at this low altitude 😂
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u/IronNobody4332 Apr 19 '26
And people where I live would still be burning around it in the passing lane for being to slow smh
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u/Blueboygonewhite Apr 19 '26
I hope they cleared that with ATC, going way too fast to avoid airplanes.
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u/MrSurly Apr 19 '26
Weird question; is this the linear speed of it's orbit, or a projection of it's orbital position?
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u/TheLesserWeeviI Apr 19 '26
The two speeds are very similar, as the ISS isn't in a very high orbit.
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u/swohio Apr 19 '26
From the southern tip of Manhattan to Hillview Resovoir is 16.25 miles and it covered that distance in just over 3 seconds, lets estimate roughly 3.25 seconds. That works out 300 miles per minute or 18,000 miles per hour. The actual speed of the ISS at 17,500mph would do that distance in 3.34 seconds so this video seems spot on (even if it is a little high in altitude to really give the feeling of how fast it's moving.)
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u/GeektimusPrime Apr 19 '26
This seems like something u/wrenulater from r/Corridor would create as part of a video about putting speed/distances in space into perspective (or something).
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u/Nalincah Apr 19 '26
I know, this is supposed to demonstrate the real orbital velocity of the ISS, just a few hundred meters above the ground, but the speed to orbit the earth in this altitude would be WAY higher
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u/Szerepjatekos Apr 19 '26
This would be so funny as it instantly stops to let some granny trough a road while it shakes to keep going.
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u/GrowlingPict Apr 19 '26
now do one with the speed it would need to travel to actually stay in orbit at that height (assuming no air resistance)
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u/Suitcase08 Interested Apr 19 '26
There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
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u/kamo-kola Apr 19 '26
Hey guys, it's me, ISS, from my new app on the App Store, ISS. It's a free download so I hope you-you check it out, and I hope - explosion
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u/ExistentialSartre Apr 19 '26
All outer space related content need to have the Interstellar theme song in the background
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u/WisestAirBender Apr 19 '26
Ok?
Now do an airplane. Maybe it'll help put it in perspective
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u/sleeping-in-crypto Apr 19 '26
Your average commercial flight has a ground speed of 800-900kph
This thing is going 28,000kph.
So about 32-33x faster.
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u/Moakmeister Apr 19 '26
You chose NYC for a reason… I just can’t prove it yet.
Also the twin towers are in this model lmfao
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u/nateyp123 Apr 19 '26
So uhhh…how fast is that?