So you want to get into space and stay there. But gravity will always be pulling your ship down. There's nothing you can do to stop that. But what you can do is move to the side fast enough that as gravity pulls you down, you just keep missing the thing you're orbiting. So staying in space is not a matter of reaching a place or an altitude, but of going fast enough. Orbit is a velocity, and here's how to reach it. Here's how Isaac Newton figured it out. He pictured a canon firing