I don’t know anything about physics and orbits other than what I learned from Simple Rockets on android, but from what I know it’s always about how fast you’re moving rather than how far away you are.
You’re thinking that if you get far enough away then earth’s gravity won’t effect you any more, but it’s not really like that. The effect does diminish as you move further away (inverse square law!) but you’re still going to be effected, as in “how far away from this star do I need to go before I can no longer see it?”
In practice, you’ll become far more effected by the Sun’s gravity than you are by Earth’s gravity, long before you really escape Earth’s gravity.
That’s why the answer to this question is how fast you need to go, rather than how high you need to be. If you could fire yourself out of a canon at 25,000 mph and were uneffected by atmospheric drag you’d leave Earth’s area of influence faster than Earth can haul you back - so you escape.
However, if you were floating stationary 25,000 miles from Earth and uneffected by any other cellestial bodies, you’re going to fall down Earth’s gravity well.
Again, I don’t really know anything about orbital mechanics so I suppose someone and their LLM will be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am.
I don’t know anything about physics and orbits other than what I learned from Simple Rockets on android, but from what I know it’s always about how fast you’re moving rather than how far away you are.
You’re thinking that if you get far enough away then earth’s gravity won’t effect you any more, but it’s not really like that. The effect does diminish as you move further away (inverse square law!) but you’re still going to be effected, as in “how far away from this star do I need to go before I can no longer see it?”
In practice, you’ll become far more effected by the Sun’s gravity than you are by Earth’s gravity, long before you really escape Earth’s gravity.
That’s why the answer to this question is how fast you need to go, rather than how high you need to be. If you could fire yourself out of a canon at 25,000 mph and were uneffected by atmospheric drag you’d leave Earth’s area of influence faster than Earth can haul you back - so you escape.
However, if you were floating stationary 25,000 miles from Earth and uneffected by any other cellestial bodies, you’re going to fall down Earth’s gravity well.
Again, I don’t really know anything about orbital mechanics so I suppose someone and their LLM will be along shortly to tell me how wrong I am.