Why is Earth’s gravity strong enough to keep the Moon in orbit but not strong enough to prevent astronauts in space from floating?

Question

Why is Earth’s gravity strong enough to keep the Moon in orbit but not strong enough to prevent astronauts in space from floating?

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Answer 1

It’s not strong enough to stop you lifting up a pencil either! Gravity is actually a surprisingly weak force, the weakest of all the fundamental forces!

Lifting millions of pencils would still be hard, and a rocket is similarly heavy, so it still takes a lot of fuel and aerodynamic ingenuity to achieve orbit.

As to why something the size of the moon is locked into orbit, well that’s actually gravity’s one advantage: it’s incredibly long range! The other forces just don’t have the reach to move planets and moons around (unless you include supernovae and such), but gravity can reach far enough out that it’s basically the only player, and so it’s the deciding factor for orbits.