Quote Originally Posted by LS2_KID
well im gonna be wrong at this but dont they have rockets n shit that move them back to earth, and when they get up there i think they stay a certain amount of miles away from earth so that the earth still has some gravatational pull and keeps them going around the earth, like teh moon!!!
Its called being in orbit, and that is achived by launching and coming into the orbit at a certain speed, It takes being at about 17,000 mph to achieve this. When the Shuttle orbits it achives that speed and certain distance above the earth to stay in what we call a orbit. The Space Station also orbits at the same speed and the shuttle has to match its speed when docking eachtime they go up.

To leave Earth Orbit you need a greater speed like when we had the Apollo program and they would get out of earths orbit then the gravity from the moon would begin its pull as the earth released its pull on it.