eli5 why wouldn’t atronauts survive a fall from the ISS into the pacific?
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There are two main reasons.
The most important is that objects in space are not just floating up there like a hot air balloon. It’s a common mistake to think that there is no gravity in space. But that is not true. If you were 250 miles off the ground and dropped a ball, it would fall all the way back to the ground. But if you are moving fast enough the speed you fall is slower than the speed you are moving forward at so you never hit the ground. You just keep going around in a circle. This is called orbiting.
For the ISS the speed it has to be moving at is around 17,000 miles per hour. That is really fast. Faster than bullets. it is so fast that it can make it all the way around the world in about an hour and half. If you want to get back to the ground you have to get rid of all that speed. The most common way to do that is to use the atmosphere. But if you have ever gotten a rug burn you know that friction can make heat. All the friction from the air would easily cook you. Spaceships handle this by covering part of the ship with materials that can handle a lot of heat. In theory though, you could make a suit that would keep you safe from the heat.
The second is that at high speeds water acts like a solid. It’s kind of like sand. If you put your hand in it slowly, the sand particles have time to move out of the way and your hand moves through it. If you hit it hard though the particles don’t have time to move so your hand only hits the surface. Water is made up of little particles too and the same principle applies. If you hit the water going really fast you are going to have a bad time. So you’d need a parachute to slow you down.
So while it wouldn’t be possible to just jump out and land in the ocean, if you had the right suit, a parachute, and were initially slowed enough to get deep enough into the atmosphere it might be doable. We might in the future see the first orbital skydive. But it won’t be soon.
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