In Orbit You Have to Slow Down to Speed Up

If you watch sci-fi movies, you’d think that flying a spaceship is just like driving a slightly more complicated car (or a Winnebago in Spaceballs). And George Lucas gave us those galactic battles with pilots who look like they’re flying fighter jets on Earth.

Well, bad news: Space is really, really different. In particular, moving a vehicle in orbit around Earth is way more complicated than that. The maneuvers you might make with a plane sometimes have the opposite effect in orbit.

To see what I…