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This question has something do do with Newton's 1st Law, Inertia, but why doesn't she fly back and hit the back of the shuttle when she lets go?

2007-06-01 18:53:57 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics Astronomy & Space

4 answers

she would float on and on and on untill she eventually died.

2007-06-01 18:57:57 · answer #1 · answered by alien 3 · 0 0

Newton's first law says a body in motion will move at the same speed and in the same direction unless acted on by an outside force. In order to fly back and hit the back of the shuttle there would need to be something causing her to change her velocity with respect to the shuttle. When you drop something out of a car window it flies back because the air outside is not moving at the same speed as the car so it exerts a force on the item you dropped. If you were todrop something inside the car, however, it would appear to fall straight to the floor of the car directly below where you dropped it. Everything in the car is moving at the same speed as the car itself, so there is nothing to slow the dropped item down and make it travel backwards as it falls. The same is true if you jump up in a train. You come down exactly where you jumped because there is nothing to slow your forward velocity, which is the same as that of the train.

In sapce there is nothing to slow the astronaut's velocity that she shares with the shuttle as long as she is holding it, therefore when she lets go she continues to travel alongside the shuttle. If she were to push away as she did so she would drift away from the shuttle, but would still have the same forward component to her velocity.

2007-06-02 08:21:10 · answer #2 · answered by Jason T 7 · 0 0

Well theoredically becuae she is holding on she is traveling at the same speed as the ship and when she lets go she should remain the same speed but scince they are going in a orbit around the earth there is the facotr of gravity pulling her away from the ship causeing her to deaccel and drift away.

2007-06-02 01:59:35 · answer #3 · answered by Manjinder N 3 · 0 0

Just letting go in a weightless state.. you'd just stay in place. If you push a little off, you'd drift away in proportion to how hard you pushed.

2007-06-02 01:58:31 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

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