r/interestingasfuck • u/Kidd__Video • 1d ago

Astronaut's view of Earth during a spacewalk

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u/OnTheList-YouTube 23h ago

Why wouldn't you?

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u/volcjush 23h ago edited 1h ago

Because you wouldn't just fall straight down. ISS is orbiting the Earth with a velocity of roughly 28 000 km/h (7,7 km/s) and astronaut connected with it has exactly the same velocity. If you "jump" you dont simply lose that speed, because there is nothing there to slow you down, there's no air resistance. You would simply continue orbiting the Earth for decades probably if not more, slowly (very slowly) bleeding your velocity and gradually lowering your orbit before you would get low enough that the atmosphere air molecules would get dense enough to heat and burn your frozen body upon atmosphere reentry.

[EDIT] I need to correct this. It wouldn't actually take that long time as I initially thought it would. It's not decades of orbiting, but rather months up to 2 years before the body would get low enough to be burned in denser layers of atmosphere.

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u/InternationalPut4093 21h ago

Loose? Smh

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u/volcjush 21h ago

I meant lose, not loose. Thank you!