eli5 why wouldn’t atronauts survive a fall from the ISS into the pacific?
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ok buddy, imagine if you go outside and you throw your whiffle ball. what happeds? i goes a little ways, then it hits the ground.
now throw it faster! you’ll find that it goes a little farther before it hits the ground.
now imagine there are no trees, or buildings or mountains, and you can throw your ball super super fast! what would happen? it would keep going and going and by the time it hit the ground, it would be so far that you couldn’t see it anymore.
now because the earth is round like your ball, the ground curves down as you get further away, that’s called the horizon. and if you throw your ball fast enough, the ground would curve away from it as it fell, and it would keep missing the ground and loop all the way around the earth and come up behind you…
this is called an orbit, and it’s what the ISS is doing all the time. you see champ, the whole space station is constantly falling, it’s just going so fast sideways that it keeps missing the ground.
so an astronaut couldn’t fall from the ISS. if he were outside it and let go, he would just keep falling right next to it. in order to hit the ground, he’d have to slow down somehow so that he stopped missing the ground.
one way to do this is to slow down just enough that he hits the atmosphere. you see, tiger, in outer space there is very little air.
you know how you can throw your whiffle ball so that it spins and curves? that’s because the air that surrounds it pushes on it as it flies along. that air also slows it down.
the space station doesn’t really have to worry about air all that much since there isn’t much up there. but if the astronaut were to slow himself down a bit, he would fly down into a place where there is more air. that air would push on him and slow him down even more.
but here’s the problem slugger, have you ever rubbed your hands together really fast? what happens? they get hot don’t they? that’s called friction. and when the air rubs against the falling astronaut, the friction creates heat. a lot of heat because he’s still going very fast.
have you ever roasted a marshmallow over a fire, buddy? what happens? the marshmallow heats up, chars black, and bursts into flames. you see, that’s what would happen to our falling astronaut as he heated up during reentry.
so he’d be a toasty little marshmallow long before he got to the pacific, if there was anything left to hit the pacific, and he would have stopped worrying about surviving the fall a long time ago.
now you run along and go play ball in the backyard, and if you plan on going up to the ISS, bring a fucking heat shield.
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