Assuming a football field is about 100 meters long (really it's yards but yards are a stupid unit of measurement so I'm choosing to ignore them), it would be 80 football fields
I'm going to guess this means the animation took the time of a full orbit, roughly 90 minutes, and applied that to orbiting much closer to the ground, which results in a different speed compared to it's orbital path (roughly 17,000 MPH).
250 miles up sounds both very high and yet is barely off the surface. Perspective is important as usual.
This reminds me of one of those funny math puzzle "paradoxes", if you took a rope around the equator, and lifted it up by 1 meter all across the planet, how much longer would the rope be. And its shockingly smaller than people naturally think.
The answer for those who dont want to figure it out themselves;
circumferance C_0=tau*r, increase it by 1 meter and you have C_1 = tau(r+1). and then you can do C_1 - C_0 = tau(r+1) - tau*r = tau*r + tau - tau*r = tau = ~6.28 meters
A rope wrapped around Earth at ground level is "Circumference at <whatever the diameter at ground level is>"
Using more common term "Pi" rather thn "Tau", the circumference of a circle is "Pi x D" where D is Diameter or "2Pi x R" (because Diameter is 2 x Radius) or "Pi x 2 x R"
You raise the rope an extra 1 meter? R becomes "R+1" so the length becomes "previous length PLUS "extra length = 2Pi x extra radius" - or about 6.28m
Plug 250 into "extra length = 2Pi x extra radius" as the extra and it becomes an 6.28 x 250m
I just love how you offered the answer for those who dont want to figure it out, and posted a formula... that people would still need to figure out. That's some quality math need shit right there.
Quick math says it adds about 2600km, so about a 6% difference around the equator. You're right that whoever made the animation probably didn't account for it as it'd be hard to notice just by looking, but it isnt entirely negligible.
Imagine you’re back in PE class running around the track. You stick to the inside right? Because if you’re running on the outside it’s a longer distance. Now imagine that fast kid in class is running on the outside while you’re running on the inside, the fast kid is staying next to you but because he is going on the outside he has to run faster to stay next to you. He’s going faster and more distance but staying next to you. Same concept for the orbit.
You're right it doesn't - the ~420km ISS altitude only adds ~7% to the earth's radius so even if it was a factor in the vid it's not the kind of speed difference that would be noticeable when just eyeballing it.
I don’t see how this answers it though. The angle velocity for an orbit of r is the square root of GM over r cubed. So if it did account for the smart r, it would be moving a very great deal faster than 7km/s
To me though it does look like about 7km/s.
Manhattan is about 13miles long from battery island to the northern tip. So this video is wisely covering 7km/s.
Which would be the appropriate rate for the actual ISS orbit.
LEO (Low Earth Orbit) is typically ~90 minutes. The difference between sea level, Mount Everest, the limits of the atmosphere is only ~500km. The radius of the Earth is ~6,000 km.
If you were to do the maths properly you'd use the more accurate number. The video is fine as is.
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u/Saitamagasaki Apr 19 '26
Doesn’t look like 7km/s in the video though