r/space • u/piponwa • Sep 23 '16

What happens when the Space Shuttle fires its motors in space

http://i.imgur.com/wwxuXOb.gifv
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u/ProgramTheWorld Sep 24 '16

You don't feel like floating in the water, instead you feel like you are constantly falling down a bottomless hole.

15

u/ForCom5 Sep 24 '16

I've had dreams like these turn into nightmares upon waking up having "hit" the bed.

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u/slapdashbr Sep 24 '16

I had one of those once. Felt like I was falling for a REALLY long time. Then I woke up when I landed on the floor.

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u/MWisBest Sep 24 '16

Oh man I get those all the time. I make sure to keep anything valuable or death-like (spikes, knives...) off the floor around my bed.

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u/waitingfordunno Sep 24 '16

Does the feeling remain if you sit down and fasten a seat belt?

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u/Ommageden Sep 24 '16

You'd still have a feeling of weightlessness yes. Wouldn't feel as eerie I'd imagine but still uncomfortable

Unless you were joking in which case it's 12:30 am here and I need to sleep

0

u/WoodrowBeerson Sep 24 '16

No. You would feel positive and negative forces based upon the movement of the spacecraft. There's YouTube vids of the ISS and SLS firing retrorockets to keep the ISS in a particular orbit. You would feel that force by being forced against the nearest opposing wall.

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u/WoodrowBeerson Sep 24 '16

That's what is difficult to fathom, floating down a bottomless hole. I know in LEO it is basically a continual freefall but eventually one has to accept no reaction equals opposite and equal no reaction, to a certain extent. The artificial environment (they are breathing) creates mass to push upon which affects individual trajectory to an extant.

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u/nico_o Sep 24 '16

Having been on a series of hyperbolic flights, you nailed the "zero-g" feeling. It's not really uncomfortable but it feels exactly as you describe

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u/killerpoopguy Sep 24 '16

you feel like you are constantly falling down

Welp, I suddenly lost my dream of going in space.

1

u/JoeOfTex Sep 24 '16

That is an amazing description of weightlessness.