How much speed and fuel exactly would you need to leave the Earth in a straight line without any of this gay ass orbit...

zero grams.

Then you have no fuel so you're not even leaving the Earth's surface.

You really don't get it do you?

Then please explain to me what the fuck you are trying to say. I don't understand it.

>With fissile material you only need the tiniest amount of speed to escape Earth, reach orbit, or even leave the solar system

A chunk of uranium does not a space ship make

What I get is that you know nothing about orbital mechanics and rocketry.

>The curve is pretty much unavoidable unless you also want to expend fuel negating the rotational velocity of the planet while inside the atmosphere.

And the tendency of your craft t orbit the earth, the Sun, the center of the Galaxy, etc.

Not even sure how you define a straight lne in a curved universe.

>ITT people who never heard of the Project Orion
>ITT people who confuse speed with force

youtube.com/watch?v=xYoLcJuBtOw

I know about project Orion.

Speed is everything.

You need hundreds of nuclear bombs to reach escape velocity.

You could leave at 1mph. There's so much power with nuclear that you don't need to worry about speed. The fuel isn't so heavy that there's a problem with that. Traditional rocketry uses fuels that are far heavier for their ratio of energy stored in them. Thus, those devices have terrible size, weight, and speed problems. You can't hover with those or leave at 1mph simply because they start to increase in size and weight exponentially the slower they go.

So you are in special ed.

Looks like a fucking massive waste of money

It's actually really simple. You are just educated incorrectly due to the fear of nuclear anything.

You don't understand orbital mechanics.

We are not talking about orbital mechanics. There's no need to orbit or slingshot or do anything other than simply power your way into space. That's the thing with nuclear. It simply does not give a shit.

Oh, I suppose if you really want to be fuel efficient, do whatever you want.

>when Ninja Gaiden goes nuclear

Nuclear power either uses liquid hydrogen as a propellant (and, whilst being more efficient than chemical rockets, will still 'give a shit' about fuel consumption) or has negligible thrust for a launch situation.

as your speed increases towards infinity the path approaches a straight line, even if it was 200,000 mph youll still have a little bit of a curve, but surely by the it'd be almost straight

Sure thing, kid.

>I can escape the pull of gravity going at under half a meter per second because nuclear doesn't care about orbits

I wonder why NASA hasn't snapped you up yet.

Because nuclear costs more than NASA budget and it is illegal.

It is impossible to get a "straight" path unless you counter the initial x-component of your velocity with a counter burn.
That's all. It really isn't much. The closer to either pole the launch is, the less x-component there is. That mans you wouldn't have much choice in direction. It's either north or south.
Unless you mean "straight" relative to the Sun. That's significant, because the Earth has quite a bit orbital velocity, and there's nowhere on Earth to start from that can nullify that.
Sounds like homework.

Orbital mechanics are still required for escaping orbit Einstein.
Kinda like you still have to take aerodynamics into account even though you are launching into space.

Have to go fast as light.

Not getting in to the whole nuclear thing, but the user is right in that you don't have to leave atmosphere at thousands of km/hr. To reach orbit you need to be going really fast, yes, but to reach a high altitude and be 'in space' you could get there going 1mph, provided it was constantly applied.

Why dont they just use a really big balloon to get to space?

The problem is that demands a thrust system that is completely in the realm of fantasy.
For one thing, required thrust to maintain 1mph will decrease with altitude and with fuel consumption.
Second, you need to leave Earth's SoI before you run out of fuel, and even with nuclear fuels 1mph is going to take centuries to escape.

Once you reach eacape velocity you can shut down your engines. With this fantasy craft the engine has to run until it leaves SoI.

Basically it's not worth thinking about.

With a very large ruler.

Build your ship out of hydrogen or helium. I hear they tend to escape Earth even without trying.

Or maybe build it from light.

Or use high power lasers to manufacture some distant meteor into a spaceship.

Or just declare the entire Earth to be your spaceship.

>Sure, it may take forever, but that doesn't matter so long as you never run out of fuel.
This is your spaceship.

Balloons can only reach space if you fill them with vaccuum

Assuming an acceleration of 1g would it be realistic to travel into the future with time dilation or would it take many years?

Then why's my vacuum flask not flying into space?

That gets altitude but not velocity

Did you put it in a balloon?

9.808 m/s2

>he doesn't know about brap-powered space craft

youtube.com/watch?v=vwrLR2kv5KA

All you need to do for speed is adjust the amount of brap. Notice how you don't need a transfer orbit. Memes aside, this is a good video.