A rocket needs to achieve about 18,000 to 19,000 MPH to get an object into a low orbit. If the speed is less than that, the object doesn't complete one orbit, but falls back to earth.
It takes about 35,000 MPH (from memory) to completly break free of the gravity of earth. That's how fast the lunar landing craft had to go to get to the point in space where the pull of the moon's gravity is stronger than the pull of the earth's gavity.
If the lunar craft had NOT achieved that speed, it would have fallen back to earth without ever reaching the moon.
If you design rockets, fuel tanks, etc. and supply enough launch fuel on the pad to only achieve 18,000 MPH, there is NO WAY IN HELL that you can somehow, even with pilot error, get that craft to essentially double in speed, and therefore be capable of escpaping earth's gravity, and just "sail off" into the solar system, and points beyond. Just CAN'T be done.
You are forgetting that the Soviets used Flubber as a heat shield, so their capsules picked up velocity if they bounced off the atmosphere.
Five weeks later, on 19 May 1961, the brothers picked up what is now their most infamous recording, which they claim is of a woman cosmonaut whose ship burned up on re-entry. Then, a few days after this, they picked up a tantalising few seconds of another transmission: “Conditions growing worse, why don’t you answer?” Both recordings are clear and accurately translated.
TORRE BERT
The brothers got permission to take over a disused German bunker on the outskirts of Turin at a place called Torre Bert. Reclaiming all the scrap metal and old pipes they could find, they enlisted the help of a dozen student volunteers and constructed a series of antennæ, eventually creating a super-dish with a diameter of 15m (50ft) and weighing one and a half tonnes.
The brothers stuck a sign on the bunker wall: Torre Bert Space Centre. Inside, using discarded WWII American army equipment, they created an exact replica of Cape Canaveral, including an enormous map of the world behind a Perspex sheet along with an LED display that marked satellites’ progress.