system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does a vehicle need to go very fast to escape earth? Why cant it go very slowly but with a lot of power?
gpt
It can go slowly with a lot of power, but it will need to move a huge amount of fuel with it as it will have to keep burning for a very long time

Escape velocity is the speed you need to get out of an object's(Earth's in this case) gravity well and continue off endlessly.  The 11.2 km/s escape velocity of Earth is for an object near the surface that isn't impacted by air resistance, but if you move further away the speed requirement drops.  By the time you get to 9000 km you only need to be moving about 7.1 km/s to escape Earth

Your slow but powerful ship would just have to keep burning away from Earth until it gets far enough away that its speed exceeds the escape velocity at that distance.  Unfortunately if you're going slowly you're going to need an obscene amount of fuel due to all the energy you lose to gravity, we go quickly so you spend as little time burning fuel to fight gravity as possible.