system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What do people mean exactly when they say Earth's escape velocity is 7 miles per second (correct if wrong) if a helium filled balloon can lightly float away?
gpt
The escape velocity is the speed that an object has to be moving at the surface assuming no more force will be imparted.  If you throw a baseball from the ground it needs to be traveling 7 miles/sec as it leaves your hand to make it to space, but you could attach a rocket to the same baseball and it could escape at 1 mile an hour as long as it had enough fuel to keep going.