This is fun to think about. You only need that horizontal velocity to stay in orbit, right? But what about getting to the moon? Turns out it only goes about 1km/s. Still bloody fast, but it's a bit less scary. Daydreams of capturing that energy on descent to power a moonbase... but then the moon is quite a long way away, and you need to escape over 99% of the earth's gravity, opposed to the 10% needed to reach space. Phooey, lunch is never free.