The Jungle is self-supported by showing advertisements via Google Adsense.
Please consider disabling your advertisement-blocking plugin on the Jungle to help support the site and let us grow!
We also show significantly less advertisements to registered users, so create your account to benefit from this!
Please consider disabling your advertisement-blocking plugin on the Jungle to help support the site and let us grow!
We also show significantly less advertisements to registered users, so create your account to benefit from this!
Questions or concerns about this ad? Take a screenshot and comment in the thread. We do value your feedback.
Ode to "let's talk about" ll
|
(07-20-2021, 10:04 PM)Bchbunnie4 Wrote:(07-20-2021, 08:46 PM)homebiscuit Wrote: Did you know (just go ahead and roll your eyes now) that the pull of Earth's gravity at the International Space Station is only about 2.5% less than down here at the surface? Objects in orbit aren’t actually floating. They’re falling around the earth at orbital speed. In the case of low earth orbit and the mass of the space station, that’s about 17,500 MPH. The ISS is about 240 miles up. The best analogy is an object at the end of a string and spun around a central point. The central point is the Earth, the string represents gravity and the object is an orbiting craft. As the object is spun faster, its orbital distance around the central point increases. As long as that momentum is maintained, the object is propelled outwards but remains tethered to the central point by the string (gravity), although gravity could be more accurately depicted as a rubber band. Once it begins to slow, the orbit of the object decreases. And so objects in Earth orbit behave on the same principle. If the ISS were to come to a sudden stop, it would plummet to the Earth like a rock at supersonic speeds before it encountered the atmosphere and burned up. Even at the altitude the ISS is now, it’s orbit must be boosted on occasion because of orbital decay caused by gravity and drag from encounters with faint remnants of Earth’s atmosphere. (deep breath) So, to answer your question, if an astronaut were to become untethered from the ISS, they would ‘float’ until the forces mentioned earlier caused their orbit to decay and would burn up in the atmosphere. That process would take several weeks, if not months. They would long be dead before becoming a shooting star. |
Users browsing this thread: |
102 Guest(s) |
The Jungle is self-supported by showing advertisements via Google Adsense.
Please consider disabling your advertisement-blocking plugin on the Jungle to help support the site and let us grow!
We also show less advertisements to registered users, so create your account to benefit from this!
Please consider disabling your advertisement-blocking plugin on the Jungle to help support the site and let us grow!
We also show less advertisements to registered users, so create your account to benefit from this!
Questions or concerns about this ad? Take a screenshot and comment in the thread. We do value your feedback.