Worse, there are Texas vehicle license plates that celebrate NASA’s presence in the Lone Star State. The space shuttle taking off on the left is surprisingly accurate, ascending to the side instead of directly up. This may look incorrect, but the space shuttle needed a huge amount of sideways speed to be able to get into orbit. Space is not that far away: as I type, the International Space Station is at an altitude of only 262 miles. But for something to stay in that orbit, it needs to be moving around the Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, that is, 4.75 miles every second.
