If you fell from the height of the space station, what would your maximum speed be?

Question

This assumes that you are not traveling at the same speed as the space station, You will start with a velocity of zero relative to the point on the earth's surface that you are over at the moment.
If you have any novel factors, Be sure to point them out. Thank you.
NOTE: if you believe that terminal velocity is 180 mph, you need not respond. It's not that I tire of hearing this, but we have already progressed past this point.

OK, let me state this again, the question is not if you fell off the space station, but if you fell from the height of the space station. saying you wouldn't fall is ignorant, as stated in the original details, you were to assume your initial velocity relative to your position over the earth would be zero. you do not need to take into account how this happened, You WILL fall.
If you think you can answer the question, do not "neglect air resistance" do not "neglect the variation in the value of gravity from zero to 400 km." Do not state that you can only fall so fast (with one exception, skydivers are not capable of comprehending this problem.)
There are a couple of very good starts here,
and just FYI, you can break the sound barrier with your body, as suggested by one astute answerer. It has been done, and survived, by at least one person. Best answer prize is still up for grabs, lets see if anyone out there has the comp skills to do it.

Answer 1

Be real dude. Read the questions on this site. Do you honestly think anyone here could even begin to give you an intelligent answer?

Answer 2

Okey dokey, so you can have a terminal velocity once you hit the atmosphere, but before that your speed will only be bounded by how far you've fallen.

So a typical orbit for a space station can average around 400 km from Earth, The atmosphere pretty much peters out around 100 km. That gives you roughly 300 km of falling to do before you reach your maximum.

Potential Energy when you dive out from space station relative to the atmosphere is
G m D
Kinetic Energy when you hit the atmosphere
1/2 m V^2

Solve for V

V = (2 G D)^1/2

Busting out calculator using G = 9.8, D = 300,000
we get around 2450 meters / second or
5 480 mile/hour (mph)

Looks like you'd char pretty quickly once you started hitting the atmosphere. Technically it would be lower than that because gravity would vary, though not much, during the fall, but its just a rough estimate.

Technical note: You can't just jump out of a space station and fall to the earth. This is because space stations are basically moving fast enough so that they are falling AROUND the earth, and you would also have the same speed it did when you jumped out and would also "fall" around the earth not to it, and you'll spend days thinking about what a lame way to die this is as you starve to death when what you wanted to do was fly into the atmosphere at an incredible speed and go out in a blaze of glory. A way to avoid this and just plop straight to your doom would be to propell out of the space station in the opposite direction it is moving (relative to the earth), and do so with enough force as to cancel your previous motion relative to the earth.

Answer 3

Hi. The terminal velocity for a human being in a stable spread position is about 125-130 MPH. If you survived re-entry that would be your speed on impact. Your speed would be higher at heights where atmospheric drag is negligible and, assuming you fell from a stopped position, you would accelerate at about 32 feet per second for each second that you fell until you got into air. From a height of 140 miles this means a fall of maybe 130 miles. I'll let you do the math.

Answer 4

The space station orbits 220 miles up. Let us assume the atmosphere ends at about 50 miles up. That gives you 170 miles to fall in a vacuum. 170 miles is about 270 km or 270,000 meters. Starting from a dead stop and using the formula X=1/2AT^2, where X is 270,000 meters and A is 10 m/s^2, I get 232 seconds fall time. Using the formula V=AT, where A is again 10 m/s^2 and T is 232 sec., I get 2,320 meters per second when you enter the atmosphere and start decelerating. That converts to 8,350 km/h or about 5,220 miles per hour.

Answer 5

LOL...I was honestly thinking the SAME thing the other day. I know you would fall at 32 feet per second/per sec. (32,64,96...ect.) Your speed would increase until the rate matched the resistance force of the air and then you would fall at that rate from there. I don't know the max speed you would achieve...but would also like to know. I also wonder if you would burn up completely in the atmosphere or would there be anything left to hit Earth? While you are at it...find out exactly how long it would take for you to fall all the way to Earth? (See if someone can answer all three questions.) Good luck.

Answer 6

Two previous answers are almost identical and right-on in my opinion. Assuming that you're not orbiting, rather on a trajectory basically in synch with a point on the equator....you would pretty much freefall for 150-200 miles before reaching gas dense enough to produce frontal drag force equal but opposite to gravity.

Without duplicating their math, let's assume that puts leaves you headed for the concrete at 5000-6000mph.

You will generate a shockwave in the atmosphere at the leading edges of whatever parts of your body you choose to 'lead the way'. Shock heating (adiabatic *and* entropic heating) will expose you to a layer of gas at a temperature of a couple thousand degrees F - not as ferocious as the shuttle orbiter experiences on re-entry but still damn hot. That will pretty much toast whatever line of clothing you choose for the adventure.

In short, your body will likely land somewhere half carbonized and rather worse off for blunt trauma.

Answer 7

Nathan W is correct. The space station itself is in a state of free-fall, but it is constantly falling over the horizon. (This is called orbiting.) Astronauts in the space station exerience zero Gs because they are in free-fall, not because they are beyond the effects of gravity. A person who "falls" off the space station would just drift along in the same orbit as the space station.

Answer 8

It depends on how high up the station is, if you want to disregard wind resistance the formula you would have to use is 9.8ms2 9.8 meters per second squared is the rate that all objects fall to earth. this formula does not take in account for wind resistance which is where terminal velocity comes in.

Answer 9

I'm not going to answer the question, but I will defend it. The folks who are pushing "terminal velocity" are not considering that it only applies at low altitudes with a significant atmospheric density. You could easily exceed "terminal velocity" falling through a near-vacuum.

Answer 10

Height Of The Space Station

Answer 11

Um... You can't fall from a space station. you'd just float if your initial velocity is 0. You would have to actually have a start to get you going in the proper direction.