: It's relative unless I'm not getting something. Yes, the planet is still
: "whipping" by, but as Six is drifting to Reach from the
: Corvette, is Six not also "whipping" around as fast as Reach is
: rotating in a lateral sense, rendering Six's plunge into the atmosphere
: relatively low velocity in relation to Reach itself? I mean we're on Earth
: whipping around the sun at however many kilometers per second, but I'm not
: getting vertigo or falling over because I'm moving at that same velocity
: with the Earth.

His absolute velocity is much greater than that of someone standing on the surface.

We can see this by looking at the two circles:

• The circle that someone standing on the earth's surface sweeps out as he/she rotates around the Earth's center once a day
• the circle that someone orbiting 35,786 kilometers above the Earth's surface sweeps out in a day

One circle is much larger than the other - the circumference is much greater - therefore the orbiting person has to be traveling faster in order to complete his circle in the same time as the person on the ground.

Somehow this excess velocity has to be shed so that the orbiting person can reach the ground and end up traveling at the same velocity as a person standing on the ground.

I don't know how 6 managed this. I think that we assume that he shed a lot of velocity as heat caused by atmospheric breaking. I don't know how much delta-V is required to get down low enough for atmospheric breaking to have a significant impact. What I mean is that he probably required rockets just to get low enough for the atmosphere to get hold of him.

Otherwise it may have taken months or years to deorbit him - years of drifting before the atmosphere got a good grip on him.

I liked Quirel's suggestion that the ship was in a Star Trek style, "standard orbit" - an 'orbit' where you aren't going fast enough to remain in orbit once your engines are switched off.

I also liked his description of the reentry pack and how it worked.

As Cody points out - it may not be enough. It bugged me at the time but I've moved on a long time ago. I don't care these days.