Comment on How come all the crap like satellites that we put into space...it never hits a rocket or the ISS?
Patnou@lemmy.world 1 week agoI just keep thinking of that picture with earth and it is surrounded by dots suppose to be satelite and space debri. Kind of seems like a hard thing to schedule. Is this why rockets take off at a slight angle instead of straight up and down? Or is it just seem that way from our view point on a rotating mass?
Rockets need to go fast parallel to Earth surface rather than just high, though atmosphere slows you down, so you start by going up to get where atmosphere is less dense faster and angle yourself steadily to gain orbital speed.
The first two pictures here explain it better than I ever could
SparroHawc@piefed.world 1 week ago
Rockets take off at an angle because they stay up due to horizontal motion, not vertical (once they’re above the atmosphere). Essentially they go so fast that the curved surface of the earth falls away exactly as fast as the rocket falls. If they just went up, they’d come back down at the same speed due to gravity. Gravity affects rockets for way further than you would think (consider that the moon stays where it is in orbit due to gravity).