On October 3, 1942, on an island off the coast of Germany, a V-2 A4 rocket launched into the sky. This rocket would become the first human-made object ever to reach space.
After World War II, the American, Soviet, and British Governments gained access to the technical designs for the German V-2, and the world’s modern rockets and missiles were born.
It is no secret, to get to space, you need propulsion. But, surprisingly, you don’t need a ton of speed. Technically, you can get there at any speed, as long as you continue to propel yourself upward. Of course, the slower you go, the more energy you use. That’s because you are always fighting against gravity.
Now, if you want to break free from gravity, that’s when you will need some speed. To break free from the Earth’s gravitational pull, you must achieve what is called escape velocity.
In physics, escape velocity is defined as the speed which an object needs to achieve to break free from a planet’s gravitational pull.
To escape the Earth’s gravity, you must reach and maintain a minimum speed of around 25,000 miles per hour. Any slower, and you fall back to Earth.
There is a philosophical notion called the mediocrity principle.
This principle states that “if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it’s likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories.”
When used in astronomy, this principle is applied to mean that the properties and evolution of the solar system are not unusual in any critical way. This means, what is true in our area of the universe we believe to be true in every other area of the universe.
I often use this principle as a way to take successful models from, say, physics, and overlay that model in areas of life.
Let’s take escape velocity. What’s an area of life that shares the following traits?
To me, this model is very similar to the path of attaining and maintaining success.
So, using the mediocrity principle, I’ve overlayed the pursuit of success with the model of escape velocity and created what I call success velocity. Here’s how it works:
Let me know in the comments what you think of Success Velocity.
Ok, that’s all for today. Good luck out there!
#CreateSomethingGreat
