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SolkaTruesilver wrote:Wait, what happens if you lose velocity while in close orbit to the earth?

You crash.

Captain Seafort wrote:

SolkaTruesilver wrote:Wait, what happens if you lose velocity while in close orbit to the earth?

You crash.

So, if you lose ennough velocity to lose the escape level, the atmosphere is going to constantly slow you down until you end up being too slow, and you then crash?

Quite depressing.

That's sort of the whole idea behind reentry for every manned spacecraft ever.

SolkaTruesilver wrote:

Captain Seafort wrote:

SolkaTruesilver wrote:Wait, what happens if you lose velocity while in close orbit to the earth?

You crash.

So, if you lose ennough velocity to lose the escape level, the atmosphere is going to constantly slow you down until you end up being too slow, and you then crash?

Quite depressing.

That's exactly how they land. Notice they burn all that fuel to get to orbit, but almost none to come back? Because all you need to come back is to slow down a little and you nudge into the atmosphere. Friction takes you down from there.

GrahamKennedy wrote: That's exactly how they land. Notice they burn all that fuel to get to orbit, but almost none to come back? Because all you need to come back is to slow down a little and you nudge into the atmosphere. Friction takes you down from there.

How many orbits are required to slow down to acceptable crashable speed?

SolkaTruesilver wrote:

GrahamKennedy wrote: That's exactly how they land. Notice they burn all that fuel to get to orbit, but almost none to come back? Because all you need to come back is to slow down a little and you nudge into the atmosphere. Friction takes you down from there.

How many orbits are required to slow down to acceptable crashable speed?

Depends how fast you want to drop.

And how big of an impression you want to make upon arrival.

In all seriousness, I believe the shuttle starts doing big slow S curves to the left and right of it's course once it's got enough air for the control surfaces to work, so that it wastes speed even faster. But it still takes a good long stretch of an orbit to come down. Dunno how much... half an orbit maybe?