I understand why astronauts orbiting the earth are weightless since they are in constant freefall. But why are the astronauts who went to the moon weightless?
I imagine that as you accelerate away from the earth towards the moon, you are no longer falling but are instead climbing. Intuitively, I think that this would give you some kind of gravity. Coming back I would think that you are constantly falling towards the earth, so I understand how the return journey would be weightless.
In: Physics
Imagine that there’s a really large lake, miles across in every direction. It’s fed by a small rivers and drained by one too. If you were on a boat and close to the draining river, you’d be affected by its flow and would have to power the boat to not get sucked into their currents. But when you’re on the middle of the lake, you don’t feel affected by any of the rivers. You could sit out there for hours and barely drift.
This is a bit like gravity and space. You can feel the effects of gravity close to a large source of it like a planet (or river in the description), and though there is still some gravity in space it’s hard to discern it since the force weakens a lot when you get away from the source. It’s still there, but you only feel the large effects when you’re close to it.
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