when leaving the earths atmosphere, do astronauts experience weightlessness immediately, or is it a gradual experience?
Answer Hi Ed, It’s not the atmosphere, as you probably know; this planet would still have the same gravitational “well” due to it’s mass, even without an atmosphere. The mass of the atmosphere is negligible compared to the mass of the Earth itself. It’s the velocity of the spacecraft and the resulting centripetal force around the Earth, that “counters” gravity, so that the two equal out and cancel each other as the spacecraft arrives at the orbital speed, read that….falling around the Earth at 5 miles per second, or 18,000 miles per hour. So I initially thought that it would be a gradual experience. But that’s incorrect, because what the astronauts are REALLY feeling…is the acceleration of the rocket up to that speed, so they may even be feeling 2.5 or 3 “g’s” force under that heavy acceleration, at say 100 feet per second squared. {Just like you going from zero to 80 mph in your car in 4 seconds, you’re shoved back into the seat pulling 3g’s transversely, then you immediately ease
