How does Microgravity work? How does spinning make fake gravity?
There’s really no magic to making a low gravity environment, you simply need to create a condition where an object is in free-fall, just like the shuttle is in it’s orbit around the earth. So any time you find yourself in free-fall, such as when you go off the high-dive at your local pool, maybe, you are actually experiencing a low gravity environment. Of course it doesn’t last very long, eventually you hit the water and stop your free-fall. You can test this next summer with a tennis ball. After you spring off the board, let go of the ball (don’t impart any extra force), and you’ll see that it basically stays put relative to your body – it goes up and then down into the water just as you do. Both you and the ball are falling at the same rate, just as Newton predicted, and experiencing low-gravity. If you further imagine that you and the ball are both inside the shuttle, and falling for 16 days (a really high diving board!!!), then you’ll get a feel for what the environment in orbit mi
