Additional Energy
If the central body has radius R, then the additional energy of an elliptic orbit compared to being stationary at the surface is
- For the Earth and a just little more than this is ; the quantity is the height the ellipse extends above the surface, plus the periapsis distance (the distance the ellipse extends beyond the center of the Earth); the latter times g is the kinetic energy of the horizontal component of the velocity.
Read more about this topic: Specific Orbital Energy
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)