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Has been fixed by now. IF you have spare monitor going at your office/home, its fun to watch the ISS up to second tracking locations [1]. Fun fact I learned l

Has been fixed by now. IF you have spare monitor going at your office/home, its fun to watch the ISS up to second tracking locations [1]. Fun fact I learned lately about ISS: at 400km above Earth's surface, the gravity is about 80% of a normal Earth gravity. The ISS is constantly falling down but because of Earth rotation it is falling "at the edge" so to speak so it never actually fell on the ground. Hope that make sense, I'm sure you read better explanation on Wiki. [1] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station/Where_is_the_International_Space_Station http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Internat...

dylan604 8y ago
Seriously? "Get the latest Flash player to view this content". Wow, just wow. 2018 is almost 3/4 done, and we still have sites with Flash.
- asdfman123 8y ago
  I guess they're too busy building boring old space stations.
  - dylan604 8y ago
    That's why you staff that stuff out.
benmowa 8y ago
cool, I hadn't seen that link before. thanks.
- joering2 8y ago
  You welcome! And you welcome to upvote me, since no matter what I say, a few of HN moderators will continue to be down-voting my postings. Oh well...
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    Yeah I have no idea why your parent post got down voted. Why do you say HN mods downvote you?
  - zizee 8y ago
    Is that what is happening? I was struggling to see a possible reason for why your post was being voted down, and unless your original post was modified, there are not many other explanations (unless people don't understand how gravity/orbits work). I would be very disappointed if members of the HN community are voting down your posts because of who you are, rather than the content. I'd like to think we're above that sort of petty behaviour. If it were were moderators abusing their positions...
akira2501 8y ago
> so to speak so it never actually fell on the ground. Well, that and the rocket motor the have onboard that allows them to periodically reboost[0] the entire station to a higher orbit. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZUkrGGfuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZUkrGGfuo
gbrown 8y ago
I prescribe you 20 hours of Kerbal Space Program as homework.
- androidgirl 8y ago
  Ksp is a truly amazing game.
evincarofautumn 8y ago
That is what orbits are, really. Just falling around a bend.
coldtea 8y ago
>Fun fact I learned lately about ISS: at 400km above Earth's surface, the gravity is about 80% of a normal Earth gravity. That doesn't seem to match the movies of ISS shown, where there seems to be no (or very small) gravity. In 80% of normal earth gravity water wouldnt stay up in the air for example, and cosmonauts wouldn't be floating around in the station as we see in the videos...
- Spare_account 8y ago
  The ISS is orbiting, it's falling sideways fast enough to miss the earth. It's effectively in freefall, so although objects at 400km altitude are subject to 80% of the gravitational pull you experience on the ground, the astronauts don't notice it because they're falling sideways at the same speed as the ISS. Edit: I just noticed that the post you were replying to included pretty much the exact same information I did, so I apologise if what I've said hasn't helped.
- ravar 8y ago
  The gravity is there, thats what keeps the ISS in orbit. However the gravity acts on everything in the ISS the same, so there is no relative acceleration in the ISS. A cosmonaut who is not touching anything and not moving relative to the walls will thus stay not touching anything, yet at the same time will still be accelerating towards the earth.
- JabavuAdams 8y ago
  This is why we should use the term "free-fall", instead of "zero-gravity". There is no way known to remove gravity. At best, you can cause the room to fall at the same rate as the things inside the room, causing the contents to float around. It's the same principle that allows specialized airplanes to create the sensation of weightlessness, while very-much in almost Earth-surface gravity.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >There is no way known to remove gravity Well, you can go far away from large masses to effectively diminish e.g. earth's gravity though, no? >It's the same principle that allows specialized airplanes to create the sensation of weightlessness, while very-much in almost Earth-surface gravity. Yes, but I was confused because space offers also regular diminished gravity, and we also have the example of the astronauts on the moon, where gravity was much much smaller. But I should have guessed that at the height ISS is it's too little to actually reduce gravity at any substantial way, and it's all the effect of the orbit/free fall.
antidesitter 8y ago
That’s the equivalence principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle

dylan604 8y ago

Seriously? "Get the latest Flash player to view this content". Wow, just wow. 2018 is almost 3/4 done, and we still have sites with Flash.

asdfman123 8y ago
I guess they're too busy building boring old space stations.
- dylan604 8y ago
  That's why you staff that stuff out.

benmowa 8y ago

cool, I hadn't seen that link before. thanks.

joering2 8y ago
You welcome! And you welcome to upvote me, since no matter what I say, a few of HN moderators will continue to be down-voting my postings. Oh well...
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Yeah I have no idea why your parent post got down voted. Why do you say HN mods downvote you?
- zizee 8y ago
  Is that what is happening? I was struggling to see a possible reason for why your post was being voted down, and unless your original post was modified, there are not many other explanations (unless people don't understand how gravity/orbits work). I would be very disappointed if members of the HN community are voting down your posts because of who you are, rather than the content. I'd like to think we're above that sort of petty behaviour. If it were were moderators abusing their positions...

akira2501 8y ago

> so to speak so it never actually fell on the ground. Well, that and the rocket motor the have onboard that allows them to periodically reboost[0] the entire station to a higher orbit. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZUkrGGfuo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZUkrGGfuo

gbrown 8y ago

I prescribe you 20 hours of Kerbal Space Program as homework.

androidgirl 8y ago
Ksp is a truly amazing game.

evincarofautumn 8y ago

That is what orbits are, really. Just falling around a bend.

coldtea 8y ago

>Fun fact I learned lately about ISS: at 400km above Earth's surface, the gravity is about 80% of a normal Earth gravity. That doesn't seem to match the movies of ISS shown, where there seems to be no (or very small) gravity. In 80% of normal earth gravity water wouldnt stay up in the air for example, and cosmonauts wouldn't be floating around in the station as we see in the videos...

Spare_account 8y ago
The ISS is orbiting, it's falling sideways fast enough to miss the earth. It's effectively in freefall, so although objects at 400km altitude are subject to 80% of the gravitational pull you experience on the ground, the astronauts don't notice it because they're falling sideways at the same speed as the ISS. Edit: I just noticed that the post you were replying to included pretty much the exact same information I did, so I apologise if what I've said hasn't helped.
ravar 8y ago
The gravity is there, thats what keeps the ISS in orbit. However the gravity acts on everything in the ISS the same, so there is no relative acceleration in the ISS. A cosmonaut who is not touching anything and not moving relative to the walls will thus stay not touching anything, yet at the same time will still be accelerating towards the earth.
JabavuAdams 8y ago
This is why we should use the term "free-fall", instead of "zero-gravity". There is no way known to remove gravity. At best, you can cause the room to fall at the same rate as the things inside the room, causing the contents to float around. It's the same principle that allows specialized airplanes to create the sensation of weightlessness, while very-much in almost Earth-surface gravity.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >There is no way known to remove gravity Well, you can go far away from large masses to effectively diminish e.g. earth's gravity though, no? >It's the same principle that allows specialized airplanes to create the sensation of weightlessness, while very-much in almost Earth-surface gravity. Yes, but I was confused because space offers also regular diminished gravity, and we also have the example of the astronauts on the moon, where gravity was much much smaller. But I should have guessed that at the height ISS is it's too little to actually reduce gravity at any substantial way, and it's all the effect of the orbit/free fall.

antidesitter 8y ago

That’s the equivalence principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_principle