To stay in low Earth orbit instead of falling back, a spacecraft must travel sideways at roughly 7.8 kilometers per second — about 28,000 km/h — so the curve of its fall matches Earth’s curve.
Rockets spend most of their fuel fighting gravity and air drag just to reach that sideways sprint. Once there, “falling around” the planet feels like weightlessness.
That speed is the price of admission for satellites, crews, and cargo. Miss it and you make a ballistic arc home; hit it and you join the thin traffic layer ringing the world.
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