The escape velocity from your home planet is 25,200 mph, or 7 miles per second. Want to leave Earth and visit the moon? Get a rocket, a really big and powerful one. You need to keep fighting Earth’s gravitational pull for about 210,000 miles on a journey to the moon. Then, at a distance of 210,000 miles, just 28,000 miles from the moon, something happens. Little moon’s gravitational pull equals big Earth’s. And past that point? Little moon wins the gravitational battle even though its escape velocity is a mere 5,400 mph, or 1.5 miles per second. David beats Goliath. Your rocket breaks free from Earth’s pull and falls toward little moon on course to a crash landing.
In every argument, there is an ultimate stronger side, a pull toward a local truth. In contemporary thinking, truth is always relative. The influence of one “truth” over another is a matter of proximity. Even weak arguments win as people are drawn closer to the arguer. Thus, the leaders of cults win over the hearts and minds of those who leave one home “truth” for a different one, sometimes one inimical to the health and safety of the “astronaut,” the traveler who wishes to leave what appears to be the confining pull of the home planet.
How else can you explain the willing self-destruction of suicide bombers? How else can you explain the followers of Charles Manson or of any cult leader? If you travel to the moon, you will, regardless of your home planet’s influence, eventually fall into the gravitational pull of the smaller body. You might find the adventure of traveling to a distant world exciting until you crash land. So, before you leave "Earth," keep your options open by making sure your rocket has enough fuel to reach the escape velocity for a return journey.
In every argument, there is an ultimate stronger side, a pull toward a local truth. In contemporary thinking, truth is always relative. The influence of one “truth” over another is a matter of proximity. Even weak arguments win as people are drawn closer to the arguer. Thus, the leaders of cults win over the hearts and minds of those who leave one home “truth” for a different one, sometimes one inimical to the health and safety of the “astronaut,” the traveler who wishes to leave what appears to be the confining pull of the home planet.
How else can you explain the willing self-destruction of suicide bombers? How else can you explain the followers of Charles Manson or of any cult leader? If you travel to the moon, you will, regardless of your home planet’s influence, eventually fall into the gravitational pull of the smaller body. You might find the adventure of traveling to a distant world exciting until you crash land. So, before you leave "Earth," keep your options open by making sure your rocket has enough fuel to reach the escape velocity for a return journey.
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