Tony Langdon wrote: --- snip --
That's for sure. It's amazing how many people don't know the difference. Not helped when the mainstream media talks about "body weight problems" when it's really a problem of excess mass. You can reduce your weight by 100% easily, if you have a spare $20 million. Book a vacation on the ISS! ;) But it's only temporary, it all comes back when you reach the ground! ;)
Tony,
Are you really weightless in space? Surely you're just in free fall. When the term "weightless" is used to describe the condition astronauts experience, this is surely a literary term, rather than a scientific one.
Why spend the $20.000.000 (or 20,000,000 if that's your custom) you mention, when you could achieve that same "weightlessness" by jumping out of a building (if for a shorter time, of course, and with a riskier outcome).
Am I weightless when I jump off a chair?
Are orbiting satellites "weightless"?
Or are they just falling down all the time (in a very special way but because of their weight).
If a satellite falls down in the special way we call an orbit because the planet's gravity is acting on it's mass, isn't that weight?
So... wouldn't a "weightless" satellite barrel off on a straight line?
Sil