If you were in a satellite orbiting the Earth, how might you cope with walking, drinking, or putting a pair of

Question

If you were in a satellite orbiting the Earth, how might you cope with walking, drinking, or putting a pair of scissors on a table? Explain.

This is a question from ch. 6 of a physics textbook on law of universal gravitation, Kepler's laws of planetary motion, gravitational field. Please help! All answers are greatly appreciated, thank you!

Answer 1

“For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.” When you are orbiting the earth you are in a state of constant falling; free fall or what most people call zero-g (NASA calls it micro-g). To anything in such an orbit the powers of gravity are too minor to matter. The heart of the question is what happens in the lack of gravity. This is why the question appeared in a text book on the law of gravitation; most notable Kepler was concerned what happened in space when gravity was the only force present.

The question starts to make sense when you add the word "on." If you were ON a satellite orbiting the Earth how might you cope with walking drinking or putting a pair of scissors on a table. For THAT answer you only have to look at Skylab, Meir, and the International Space Station.

Walking: When the astronauts exercise they use bungee cords to hold them down to the treadmill, if they don't they will just float away at each step.

Drinking: Notice all those zero-g experiments with water where the astronauts let globes of it flow through the cabin and nudge it to make it quiver like jelly. This is why the astronauts only drink water and other liquid through straws. I bet you didn’t know that Capri Sun squeezables are actually astronaut food.

Putting a pair of scissors on a table: Look at the tools the astronauts have to use. They can't use a simple screwdriver because they need to brace themselves to use them and they use a special tool that is a power driver with a rotational counterweight system that cancels out the force of the tool. Otherwise if they tried to rotate a screw or nut the astronaut would turn instead.

When you put down a pair of scissors on a table you either exert too little force and the scissors don't quite make the table and so are floating (under gravity they would just fall) or you exert just a little too much force and push the scissors against the table (under gravity they stay there). In a zero-g environment the slightest extra energy has to be used up so like Isaac Newton said; “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Thus placing a pair of scissors on a table would force you to float away. We don't see this happen on earth because the forces of friction and gravity then to cancel out these kind of movements, but we do see them in space.

Answer 2

Hi. If the ship were spinning on its axis you would experience artificial gravity. A long ship would be easier to get spinning to a .3 or more g force.

Answer 3

like the last guy said, it has to rotate on it axis as it orbits....just like Halo....or some stat trek...maybe deep space 9