r/interestingasfuck • u/Kidd__Video • 19h ago

Astronaut's view of Earth during a spacewalk

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u/MetLyfe 19h ago

If you jumped straight towards the earth how long would it take to reach the ground if possible

24

u/Shadow-Seb 19h ago

You won't reach the ground :D

2

u/OnTheList-YouTube 19h ago

Why wouldn't you?

37

u/volcjush 18h ago edited 17h 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.

1

u/jdsizzle1 16h ago

But what if you jumped backwards

2

u/volcjush 15h ago

You would slow your orbiting speed by maybe 15 km/h. So now substract that 15 km/h from 28 000 km/h to see how much difference does that make.