If they could keep it up, that reach would get less gradual over time. The first delta vee had gained them 14.18 kilometers. The second, equivalent delta vee had reaped 14.21 kilometers—an improvement of about thirty meters. These gains were tiny in comparison to the distances of outer space, but from a mathematical standpoint the trend was extremely significant. It meant that the higher they went—the more elongated the orbit became—the more leverage they could obtain from each one of those tiny delta vees. That difference of thirty meters would grow and grow until it spanned many kilometers, and each of those improvements would feed back into the equations and amplify the next result a little bit more. It was an exponential sort of phenomenon, and this time humanity was on the right side of it.