Yahoo Answers is shutting down on May 4th, 2021 (Eastern Time) and beginning April 20th, 2021 (Eastern Time) the Yahoo Answers website will be in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.

objects in orbital stations don`t suffer earth gravity,but the station itself does?

how come this?pls explain...

Update:

sorry don`t know which is the best answer,all seem good

4 Answers

Relevance
  • Mez
    Lv 6
    9 years ago
    Favorite Answer

    The force of gravity on both the orbital station and the contents are balanced by the centrifugal force of rotational motion. It is exactly the same reason that objects of different mass fall at the same rate in Earth's gravitational field. That is exactly what an orbit is, the object falling towards the Earth, but because the Earth is spherical, the curvature means that it gets no closer to the Earth, but just keeps "falling".

    Source(s): me
  • 9 years ago

    Everything is affected by the earths gravity but as the station and the contents are equally affected there is no relative movement.

    To make matters even more interesting because both the station and the contents are orbiiting around the earth the force of gravity is used in maintaining the orbit. Neither the station nor the contents get any closer to the earth despite the gravity.

    Which in turn means that IF you could put them on a set of scales that has the other end on the surface of the earth, neither would show any weight.

  • 9 years ago

    You do feel gravity, but everything is accelerating at the same speed so it appears that you do not?

    It is like when you jump in an elevator you seem to jump higher because the floor is accelerating away not because gravity has a lesser effect on you

  • nanhey
    Lv 4
    4 years ago

    i heard you ought to so i went out on the prescribed time. and there it became, a spectacular dot relatively hauling tail from the west to the east...it made it like 3/4 of how around the sky and then disappeared..i assume the attitude of the sunlight or shadow of the earth blockading it out.

Still have questions? Get your answers by asking now.