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How can we be wieghtless in a spacecraft that is still under a planets gravitational pull?

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How can we be wieghtless in a spacecraft that is still under a planets gravitational pull?

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Technically speaking astronauts are not weightless when they are in orbit, they are in freefall. The spacecraft is actually ‘falling’ at the same rate as the astronaut is falling so they appear to be weightless. There is an airplane they call the ‘Vomit-Comet’ because it flies in a parabola shape. On the downward slope of the parabola, the plane is ‘falling’ at the same rate as the people on board so they appear to be weightless as well. This is how they train astronauts to deal with ‘weightlessness’ and it is also how they filmed much of the movie Apollo 13 to simulate zero-gravity.

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This all depends on the size of the object. The earth doesnt have alot of gavitational pull, so we can break free of this. Whilst under the gravitational pull, we are never fully weightless, only partially. Once free of this, we become weightless. The gravitational pull of the sun on the earth is far larger than the pull of the earth on a spacecraft. If we were to take the spacecraft off from the sun, it would be extremely hard and would take a longer amount of time for the people on board to become weightless. (Even if they were dead from the heat) toodles…

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