[areoform]

Think about it as a vector. Imagine if you were a god, and you placed a particle in the same orbit as Earth. Now imagine you wanted to smash it into the sun. How would you do it?

For the particle to fall straight "down" to the sun, in a straight line, you would have to cancel all of its orbital velocity.

That's why it's difficult to get close to the sun and it requires a lot of energy. You have to subtract out a large part of Earth's orbital velocity.

But that's just one part of the explanation. It's not intuitive per se (I imagine it as a play between kinetic and potential energies), but the closer you are to a body, the faster your orbit. The farther out the "slower" your orbit.

It's the opposite of a disc.

[denton-scratch]

Ah, thanks.

If I get you right, the braking slows the orbiting object down. But that slow-down causes it to move to a lower orbit, losing potential energy in exchange for increased orbital velocity. And the velocity you drop in high orbit, you gain with interest as you move to low orbit.

So braking makes you go faster.