Its called math. If you know the mass of the object, the pull of gravity, and the rate of rotation, you can tell how much more energy you need to add to your spaceship to achieve escape velocity.
Also, we did know that stuff. LaGrange points were well known way back then. My dad learned that in his physics course in the Navy in the 80s. If it was in military curricula at that time, NASA sure as frick knew about it.
Of course not. But the cool thing about physics is, if you know the mass of a planet, you can calculate its gravitational pull and therefore the escape velocity at any altitude and any latitude. I did exercises like this for my calculus class in college related to this and I aced them.
Its called math. If you know the mass of the object, the pull of gravity, and the rate of rotation, you can tell how much more energy you need to add to your spaceship to achieve escape velocity.
Also, we did know that stuff. LaGrange points were well known way back then. My dad learned that in his physics course in the Navy in the 80s. If it was in military curricula at that time, NASA sure as frick knew about it.
Of course not. But the cool thing about physics is, if you know the mass of a planet, you can calculate its gravitational pull and therefore the escape velocity at any altitude and any latitude. I did exercises like this for my calculus class in college related to this and I aced them.