Velocity quantity, momentum, is a vector and defined by In special relativity, the dimensionless Lorentz factor appears frequently, and is given by where γ is the Lorentz factor and "c" is the speed of light. Escape velocity is the minimum speed a ballistic object needs to escape from a massive body such as Earth. It represents the kinetic energy that, when added to the object's gravitational potential energy, (which is always negative) is equal to zero. The general formula for the escape velocity of an object at a distance "r" from the center of a planet with mass "M" is where
Escape velocity specify a direction: no matter what the direction of travel is, the object can escape the gravitational field (provided its path does not intersect the planet). The simplest way of deriving the formula for escape velocity is to use conservation of energy. For the sake of simplicity, unless stated otherwise, we assume that an object is attempting to escape from a uniform spherical planet by moving away from it and that the only significant force acting on the moving object is the planet's gravity. In its initial state, "i", imagine that a spaceship of mass "m" is at a distance