Frequently Asked Forum Questions | ||||
Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
: Further you have to reach it because at some point, you're going to shut down
: your engines and become unpowered. You can't burn them forever.
: Also I stole the equation from xkcd and I don't think it'd be wrong :-p
Yes, it needs to constantly accelerate to push it away from a planet or moon, but it doesn't need to hit escape velocity, which is about 40,320 kph on Earth (Reach's would be a bit higher because it's more massive). According to NASA, the space shuttle only went about 4800 kph at an altitude of 45 km, and its orbital speed was only about 28,000 kph. "Escape velocity" only refers to the initial speed an unpowered object (like an artillery projectile or a thrown baseball) would have to go to move permanently away from another object like the Earth.