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The high speed required to exit the earth's atmosphere is called the 'escape velocity' and it's necessary because of the earth's gravitational field and has nothing to do with the atmosphere, except that the enormous friction generated by the air molecules passing over the vehicles skin can cause severe heating problems.

On re-entry the same combination of gravitational pull and air friction causes the vehicle to gain speed and heat up to the point of incandescence, which is why the space shuttle has special tiles on its underside and comes in at a nose up angle to ensure that the tiles take the brunt of the heating.

Early space capsules used a heat shield to dissipate the heat by being burnt away at a controlled rate and also had to be positioned to put the heat shield to the front to protect the capsule behind.

However it isn't so much necessary as unavoidable to re-enter at speed. Ideally the space craft would be able to use retro rockets to slow its descent to a suitable velocity but it would also have to carry an enormous amount of fuel to do so which would make it impractically heavy on liftoff.

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Q: Why do you have to travel so fast to exit or enter earths atmosphere?
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