What if you're dropped in space, do you fall forever?

Answer 1

Gravity reaches out for everything, no matter how far away, but like light, it's force weakens with distance. If you were dropped in space you would start to fall towards whichever direction the pull of gravity was the strongest. If it is very weak attraction you would move very slowly. If you were dropped in a certain direction and already had some momentum, you would fall in the direction of your momentum until gravity overcame that and pulled you where it wants you to go.

Answer 2

Are you obsessed with this or what?.

As others have pointed out, there is no up or down in space. You have to leave your Earthly experience behind when think about space. That is why ignorant people go on about anomalies on the moon that they think prove men did not go there. It is totally different out there. Einstein showed that even Newton's physics that work great on Earth, need updating for space.

If you get out of the shuttle slowly, and do not push on it, you will just travel along with it. If you give the shuttle the slightest push, you will be off in the opposite direction. You will carry on drifting away in a slightly different orbit.

You will NOT go off into deep space because you are still bound by Earth's gravity.

However, you will not be able to get back to the shuttle without having a little rocket engine to drive you back there.

If you were to do this in deep space beyond our Solar System (nobody has been out of the gravity influence of the Sun), you would drift forever, or until you got caught in the gravity field of a star, which could take hundreds of thousands of years.

Advice: just don't get out.

More: if your dreams have you falling, you are not in space. Go see a shrink.

Answer 3

Once you are "in motion" you will remain "in motion", moving in a straight line unless some force changes your direction. But motion is not absolute. You can be moving relative to some objects, but stationary with respect to others. For example, I am sitting still relative to the earth, but since the earth is moving at an enormous velocity relative to the sun, I am moving just as quickly as the earth (relative to the sun).
But "falling" doesn't really exist in space. You simply move closer to or further away from objects or reference points. And now that I think of it, "dropping" doesn't really exist in space either. If you are let loose without any force being applied, you will stay right where you were placed.

Answer 4

No. Because in space there is no real directions as we think of here on Earth, so you can't "fall". You can float forever, unless you get close enough to another, larger body, then you'll fall to it. But you're not falling if there is no gravity.

Answer 5

If you're dropped out in open space with no gravitational influence, you don't fall at all. You just stay where you are - nothing is pulling you down.

If you're dropped into orbit around a star/planet at just the right speed, you could 'fall' forever around the object in orbit.

Answer 6

There is no up or down in space so you can´t actually fall as in falling downwards. You would just float in space and keep travelling in the direction you are heading.

Answer 7

No u float forever but if u have a device which u have in ur astronaught suit u can control which way to go

Answer 8

Inertia: an object at rest stays at rest until acted upon by an outside force.

sooner or later you might get sucked into a gravitational field.

Answer 9

No but if you are pushed you will keep floating until something hits you with equal or more force. and you will change direction or come to a halt

Answer 10

No, but you might float forever