Question by Joseph: Is it possible to leave orbit without going extremely fast?
I was curious if it was possible to engineer a plane/shuttle hybrid that could take off from a runway and then switch to non-chemical fuels when it reached a certain altitude. (VASIMR or others)? Basically, is it possible to leave earth’s atmosphere and leave it’s orbit without going extremely fast? Or would you have to achieve significant velocity in Earth’s upper atmosphere with non-chemical rockets?
Best answer:
Answer by Anthony
no. you would have to reach a significant speed to leave our gravitational pull, and be going quick enough not to burn in our atmosphere.
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