On the other hand, there’s not all that much difference between reaching Earth escape speed from low Earth orbit, and reaching the Moon from low Earth orbit. The Moon is pretty high up.
Because it has had it up to here with those asteroids.
Because the return of Dallas was more than it could bear.
Need asteroid cream
It actually uses the second, lesser known definition of velocity:
veclocity (n): speed, when the speaker or writer wishes to seem all science-y.
Actually, with the right phasing you can get to a trajectory with a zero gravitational specific energy (C3 = 0) with a delta-V budget of about 3.1 km/s, whereas the typical delta-V for a direct Earth to Moon trajectory from an inclination of 31° to 32° is about 4.8 km/s. While the two families of trajectories don’t align, it is conceivable that a substantial error in a translunar injection maneuver could send a spacecraft into interplanetary space, or at least into a very, very long period Earth orbit. The biggest single quantitative navigational risk in the Apollo program wasn’t the actual landing on the Moon, but just successfully getting into Lunar orbit, a feat roughly comparable to flinging a rock from Killarney and hitting a particular block in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (What the Irish have against Canada remains a mystery.)
Stranger
I like that analogy.
Preparation A