Is it possible to reach speeds greater than 100,000 miles per hour in space?

Although 100,000 miles per hour ( 156,200 kilometers per hour ) sounds like a rather fast speed by race car standards, it amounts to only 27 miles per second or 43 kilometers per second.

Spacecraft destined for the outer planets such as Voyager and Galileo have to reach speeds of 30,000 to 40,000 miles per hour (8 - 11 miles/sec or 13 - 17 kilometers/sec) , and just recently in its impact with the Jovian atmosphere, the Galileo spacecraft achieved a speed of over 100,000 miles per hour.

The orbital speed of the Earth is 29.8 kilometers/sec or about 66,500 miles per hour. There is no physical speed limit until we reach the speed of light at 300,000 kilometers/sec or 691 million miles per hour. Of course, there is no particular need for velocities exceeding the solar system escape velocity of about 41.7 kilometers/sec at the Earth's distance ( 96,000 miles per hour) to be required by our space program unless we want to send spacecraft to the stars, or probe the more distant regions beyond the orbit of Pluto, or simply get from one place to the other in a very expensive hurry.

Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald