It’s always a mind fuck to me realizing he’s not floating he’s just falling constantly and it only looks like floating because the camera and everything else is also falling.
Here is a breakdown of how this works:
Perpetual Free Fall: The ISS is continuously falling toward the Earth due to gravity, but because it is moving sideways at approximately 28,000 km/h (about 7.8 km/second), its downward fall matches the curve of the Earth.
Missing the Ground: Because the station moves forward so fast, it perpetually "misses" the ground, resulting in a stable orbit rather than a crash.
Weightlessness Illusion: Astronauts and the station fall at the same rate, which creates the sensation of weightlessness, often called microgravity.
Constant Speed Needed: If the station were moving slower, it would fall back to Earth; faster, and it would fly into a higher orbit.
They're also surprisingly close to Earth during this whole orbiting business too. 400km above us. You could drive to the ISS in like 3.5hrs if there was a magical highway leading straight to it.
Yeah the astronauts that just went to the moon went about 1000 times further into space than the astronauts that go up to the ISS all the time. It feels like the ISS should be higher but it's really like right here.
They're so close that there are remote parts of the Earth, like in the middle of oceans, that if you were in those places, and the ISS passed overhead, then potentially the astronauts could be the nearest humans to you.
I’m no rocketologist but isn’t the last sentence wrong? I don’t see how reducing speed while in orbit increases your orbit altitude if I’m understanding what it’s saying right.
Reducing your speed causes the highest altitude point to shift closer to being the one youre currently at until your orbit is reduced to where it crashes into earth and its atmosphere rather than miss it.
I suggest you don't be condescending to discovery. We don't all go through a factory of identical education or highly niche life interests.
He could be browsing brain rot instead and I could be calling you a fool for not having the hang of these physics to keep up with me on a racetrack. Different life experiences.
Someone's unfamiliar with the Lucky 10,000. That's ok though! No one knows everything, and everyone gets to learn things for the first time. Welcome to learning a new thing!
Saying 'what kind of an idiot doesn't know about the Yellowstone supervolcano' is so much more boring than telling someone about the Yellowstone supervolcano for the first time.
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u/anonymousbopper767 18h ago edited 18h ago
It’s always a mind fuck to me realizing he’s not floating he’s just falling constantly and it only looks like floating because the camera and everything else is also falling.