After watching the recent "space jump" a question arose. Why can a balloon not float into space? Can one be made/designed to do this?
Next, everything in orbit is falling back to earth. It only maintains its altitude with speed, about 26,000mph give or take. This number means what, 20,000+ mph relative to what?
If the shuttle or station was to stop or approach zero mph it would fall to Earth, right? The balloon was at 128,000 feet and was only traveling at the Earth's rotational velocity of 1600mph. As viewed from the ground zero mph since it came down almost in the same stop. So what happens between say 130,000 feet and space that you need to increase your speed by 24,000mph?
Last if we were at a high enough orbit and "stopped", where we would not fall back to Earth, would we be able to watch the earth leave us. Could we wait there for a year for the Earth to return? How far out would this be?
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