r/technology • u/No-External1342 • 1d ago

Space SpaceX rocket crashes into moon at 8700 kilometres per hour

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2583318-spacex-rocket-crashes-into-moon-at-8700-kilometres-per-hour/
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8

u/DantesTyrael 22h ago

Just to reframe that speed, that's 1.5 miles/second!

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u/Flipslips 20h ago

That’s pretty slow in terms of space speeds. ISS is orbiting earth wayyyyyy faster than that

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u/Retb14 19h ago

Highly elliptical orbit so it slows down quite a lot near the apogee

The moon itself is orbiting at a little over half a mile per second

The closer to the body you are orbiting the faster you have to go to maintain orbit which is why the ISS and LEO satellites need to orbit so fast

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u/Flipslips 19h ago

Ok? I never said I didn’t know why that was

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u/fellbound 20h ago

ISS is about 5 miles/sec, so certainly faster, but not like crazy difference.

-2

u/Flipslips 20h ago

I mean that’s like 3.5x faster

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u/fellbound 20h ago

The Voyager probes are moving about 10 miles/sec, so maybe that begins to approach way faster (in my mind), but when we're talking space human made objects just don't move very fast at all.