If a spaceship had a flag, would it wave as the spaceship moved through space?
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No it would not. The waving motion of a flag in the wind or a flag on a moving vehicle is caused by turbulence in the air as it moves over the surfaces of the flag. Since there’s no air in space, you don’t get that turbulence.
The pull of Earth’s gravity in LEO is only slightly less than at the surface of Earth. LEO is just freefall + horizontal speed.
The flag would actually wave/move, put only from residual movements from acceleration/deceleration and vibration from the craft it was mounted on. If it the whole assembly was in free travel it would begin to rotate and then tumble, that would also put movement into the flag.
Sure. Not from air friction as on earth but from inertia after acceleration, deceleration and maneuvers in the spaceship.
It’s going to depend a bit on exactly what you meant by “wave”. Does a flag “waving” mean “sticking out from the pole instead of hanging down?” to you, or does it mean “having wiggles moving along the flag instead of the flag being smooth and straight” to you?
Because the answer isn’t the same depending on which you meant.
Let me break it down into these cases:
Case 1 – The spaceship is moving merely with momentum, not accelerating or decelerating. In this case there will be no “wave” because the flag will just hang straight down anyway. In a car going at a constant speed, the flag sticks out because air is dragging back on the flag trying to decelerate it far more than it’s decelerating the car. But remove the air and you don’t get that effect.
Case 2 – The spaceship is accelerating, AND the engine providing the thrust is smooth as silk, not vibrating the ship at all. In this case whether it counts as the flag “waving” depends on the question I asked above about what you mean by “wave”. The flag will unfurl and stick out straight from the flagpole because the ship is pulling the pole ahead of it. But it won’t have wiggles in it.
Case 3 – The spaceship is accelerating, AND the engine providing the thrust causes some vibration through the ship. In this case it will count as “waving” regardless of which definition of “wave” you’re going with. The flag will be hanging back behind the ship AND it will be wiggling because the flagpole will be vibrating and those vibrations will pass through the flag fabric as waves.
Case 3 is also why the flags on the moon had waves in them when the astronauts planted them. The rod held the flag out, and the act of planting the flag wiggled the flagpole. It eventually did stop wiggling but it had to wait for the vibrations to eventually dampen down which takes time.
It would wave whenever there was a velocity or direction change of the craft due to its own inertia. Other that that it would just float randomly with a very faint preference towards the craft due to its very small amount of gravity. If a piece of space debris contacted the fabric the it would either get torn away or punctured as if it was shot be a gun.
Ever seen those harnesses astronauts attached themselves to the space station when they’re out for space walks? Most of the time there look like they are just floating under water and they are still traveling at around 17000 mile/hr, so imagine a piece of fabric sitting still under water just floating.
One more question can a person pull space ship toward him with arms in space ??! Its weight is going to zero ?!
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