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On 2001-11-15 10:07, JayUtah wrote:
2. Once achieving escape velocity when leaving the Earth, the Apollo would need to lose 5/6th of its velocity in order to be captured by the moon's gravity and swing into orbit. The spacecraft is moving at a velocity that prevents the Earth's gravity from pulling it back down - so unless they "put on the brakes" they certainly aren't going to be captured by the moon's gravity. However, all three stages of the Saturn V had been dropped - only the LEM remained.
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First off, it's not true that only the LM (the correct acronym) remained: the command and service modules were along, too. Second, the spacecraft was significantly slowed down by earth's gravity since the force that sent it outward was only slightly more than the minimum needed to get it to the moon. Thus, the service module engine was quite capable of "putting on the brakes."