Things You Thought You Knew – Billionaires in Space
StarTalk Radio
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The Falling Apple and the Orbiting Moon
To send an apple into orbit is also to be in free fall. It's falling towards the earth, but the earth has a curve and it never actually hits the earth. So, the falling apple and the orbiting moon are identical. The moon just happens to have a sideways velocity that the apple did not. That's why astronauts are weightless. They're not weightless because they are in space. They're weightless because of theirorbit first described by Isaac Newton in 1687.
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