Easy Orbital Mechanics I – Getting to the Moon

So, contrary to what you see in movies spacecraft can’t just sit around in space near a planet because they’d fall right into it. To stay in space we need to get into orbit. So first we take off from Earth’s surface, fly up past the atmosphere, and keep accelerating more and more so that we start looping around Earth before we could fall back into it. Now we’re in orbit. This is where we’re in zero-g because even though we’re still pulled downwards we’re just sort of free falling back onto our own trajectory. Now for example to get to the moon we need to point forward and fire our engines to expand our orbit until it intersects with the moon’s path. Now even though the moon’s gravity is starting to pull us in, we still need to flip around and burn our engines in reverse to slow down and get into orbit. At this point we can pick a spot to land, burn our engines against our trajectory, and come down to the surface. So that’s it for now guys just something you can share with a friend who wants to learn more about space travel without all the fancy math or a terminology. Thanks for watching and check the comments section for more details and stay tuned for more videos!