Recent comments in /f/space

JungleJones4124 t1_je9t2os wrote

It doesn't matter how reliable the Falcon 9 and Dragon are. It's great that they are reliable, but anything made my people will eventually fail. I'm not going to speculate on how/when because we could be here for the rest of the week.

Boeing has had a lot of difficulties and I'm not a fan of Starliner. The only way for Boeing to even start to get close to the reliability of Falcon and Dragon is to launch when its safe to do so. Will this be a long term spacecraft? Absolutely not. It will be rarely used, but it is still necessary.

2

Upholder93 t1_je9sdyb wrote

Objects in freefall do not feel the effects of g-forces. This is why astronauts on the ISS are weightless, despite the gravity in LEO being almost the same as at the surface.

So it is possible for objects to move in a curve without feeling the effects of acceleration. However it requires they be accelerated by gravity and nothing gets in their way (the ISS is always accelerating toward the centre of the earth, it just has enough lateral momentum that it never hits it).

Conceptually, if you could create and manipulate gravitational fields, you could accelerate without feeling g-forces.

4

TbonerT t1_je9rryu wrote

> maybe Starship and who knows when that will be operational.

It just has to be operational before the next SLS flight in November of next year to be competitive. Since there are multiple boosters and Starships ready to fly or under construction, they are well on their way to beating the next SLS launch.

2

Analyst7 t1_je9qvh7 wrote

You're conflating static G forces which are gravity based with acceleration forces. Your relative weight (static force) is higher or lower depending on the size of the mass exerting the force. Applied force (kinetic) is created by acceleration and are applied everywhere, even in space.

2

phoenixliv t1_je9pvu4 wrote

The sensation on zero g in space is because they’re in orbit falling around and around the planet. We’re affected by all the planets and the moon and everything in the universe to some small degree. Gravity is stronger when something is dense and or close though.

2

dirschau t1_je9pu5t wrote

"G forces" is only a common term for people being squished against stuff by inertia ("certrifigal force"). No gravity necessary.

The only connection to gravity is that it's measured in multiples of gravitation acceleration at the earth's surface, aka "g". Because it's something we're familiar with and it's easy to translate into effects on the human body.

5

Andromeda321 OP t1_je9pock wrote

Astronomer here! I posted about a month ago about helping discover the second closest black hole to Earth. At that point, we hadn’t undergone peer review, but in the first time in memory the paper was accepted with absolutely no comments by the referee. Huzzah! So thanks to such a speedy process, the paper is published today and we got to do a press release celebrating this new black hole population we are uncovering in our neighborhood!

Can’t wait to see what we find next!

36