• FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      134
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      People have a terrible understanding of orbital mechanics and apparent weightlessness. It’s not like gravity just stops affecting you after you get out of the atmosphere. Getting out of the atmosphere is the easy part of getting to orbit. Going sideways fast enough is the hard part.

        • Rakonat@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          104
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          I used to baby sit a friend’s kid when he was a wee lad, frankly we spent most time playing KSP. Used to give him challenges like if he could build a ship using x amount of parts and make orbit would let him order out pizza instead of food his mom prepared for us. He rarely succeeded at first but apparently kept at it long after I stopped mentoring him and apparently is now going to school to be an aerospace engineer. And before all that his mom could never get him to do his math homework as a tyke.

    • Rykzon
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      That’s easy, instead of accelerating towards your destination you just have to brake and stop moving to let the earth move under you, checkmate physics