Dan, escape velocity is something I was thinking of about 10 days ago, so it is interesting you brought it up. Here is the strange thing... the shuttle for instance goes into space, but it is not out of the reach of Earth's gravity. It instead is constantly falling around Earth and moving at a high rate of speed. That is why some satellites eventually come back down to Earth as they lose speed and gravity finally gets the better of them again.
So is escape velocity the speed at which you can keep spinning around Earth without falling back into it? It is still confusing to me.
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