What is the escape velocity required for a space shuttle, and how much fuel does this require?
Escape velocity is a term we use when we want to escape from the Earth’s gravity. Well, we are not actually escaping from Earth’s gravity. We re actually going into what is called the gravity realm. So we don’t actually achieve escape velocity. That would actually be if were going at least 25,000 miles per hour. For our purpose, we go into a low Earth orbit we need about 17,500 miles per hour. So that is what we have to do is go from a standing start up to an altitude of about 80 miles and get going to about 17,500 mph and to do that it takes half of million gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
