Free Fall

What if I told you that the astronauts in space are actually falling all the time?

You must be thinking that it’s a joke, astronauts don’t fall, they live under zero gravity.

Oops, in the context of angles you guessed pi for sure. Just kidding, let’s understand how it is related to free fall.

Orbit Around the Post

1. What is free fall?
2. Common Misconceptions
3. Some Record Breaking Free Falls
4. Skydiving and Terminal Velocity
5. Fun Facts About Free Fall

What is Free Fall

Free fall is the phenomenon where a body is mainly under a non contact force, which pulls the body towards itself, such as a falling water drop from rain towards the Earth or a skydiver from the sky. This non contact force is the force of gravitation of our planet, the Earth.

Astronauts don't feel their weight.

When a body is under free fall, it’s mainly under the force of Earth’s gravity. There is drag as well, due to which a freely falling body can not go beyond terminal velocity.

Drag is the resistive force due to the medium (air or water) through which the body is travelling, it increases as the velocity of the body increases.

But it doesn’t make us feel our weight because we can’t stand on it or push it to get a resultant force back on us. It’s just like the gravitational force, not on a fundamental level but as how it affects us during free fall. Both of these forces don't make us feel our weight.

Now it’s time to answer your question about why astronauts are always falling but not coming down to earth.

Actually, astronauts live in Space Stations, and the space stations are located in Low Earth Orbit. The space station is constantly coming down towards earth, although at a very slow rate, to manage it from directly falling down, they have to move it extremely fast and after every few weeks they also have to adjust the height of space stations via boosting maneuvers, since it’s always coming down.

The International Space Station (ISS) moves at a speed of 17,500 miles per hour or almost 8 kilometers per second, which is insane for an object built by human civilization.

Satellite in the orbit.

This speed is enough for the space station to make its fall into an orbit around the earth. The orbit of the ISS is not perfectly circular but elliptical.

That’s why despite continuously falling towards the earth, astronauts orbit around the earth. That’s all about why astronauts are always under free fall.

Common Misconceptions

If we ask the general public, “do heavier objects fall faster”, some may say, yes. But that’s not true at all.

All the bodies, despite their mass, fall at the same speed. Galileo first demonstrated this principle by dropping two objects of different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Both hit the ground at the exact same time, proving that the mass of an object has nothing to do with the free fall speed.

Galileo's experiment at the Tower of Pisa.

However, if you do this with a feather and rock, they will fall at different times. Because in our environment, there is atmosphere or air which creates drag for falling objects.

If the same experiment is to be done in a complete vacuum environment, both the feather and rock will fall with the same speed.

Another is what we have discussed before about astronauts falling all the time, they are not experiencing zero gravity.

Some Record Breaking Free Fall

Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic dive from the stratosphere is one historical sky breaking record made in 2012 when he achieved a speed faster than sound during skydiving.

He achieved a speed of 843.6 miles per hour, faster than the speed of sound which is 767 miles per hour.

Before Baumgartner, Joseph Kittinger made the record for the highest skydive at 31 km. At the critical time, his parachute malfunctioned which caused him to spin nearly 200 revolutions per minute. Thankfully, at the end he landed safely.

Peregrine Falcon, the fastest bird.

Don’t forget about nature, it has made its own fastest machines. Peregrine Falcon reaches speeds of over 242 miles per hour while diving for prey.

Skydiving and Terminal Velocity

You already know what skydiving is. As the name suggests, a person dives from the sky from a very high altitude.

As the skydiver jumps, he accelerates due to gravity of earth and attains very high velocity towards the center of earth. But as he comes down the atmosphere of earth, the density of atmosphere increases and drag force also increases.

Skydiving from above the clouds.

Then comes a point when the skydiver does not accelerate anymore and maintains the same speed or maximum speed, this speed is known as terminal velocity.

In other words, terminal velocity is achieved by a freely falling body when the air resistance balances the force of gravity, preventing further acceleration.

Fun Facts About Free Fall

The longest recorded free fall survival was 10,000 meters by Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who survived a plane crash in 1972.

Skydivers experience brief weightlessness when first jumping out of the plane.

Astronauts are trained for weightlessness via parabolic flights, a special plane that dives sharply, creating a 20 to 30 seconds of free fall inside the aircraft.

In a very fast roller coaster, you can experience free fall for a few seconds when it comes down very fast and you feel like your seat is temporarily falling away beneath you.

Also, you might have tried this one already. When you jump down from a few steps of stairs or from your comfortable bed to the ground, and concentrate on your body you can feel that sensation that gravity is pulling you down and there’s nothing under your feet, giving a chilling sensation of free fall.

This jump seems too high for me.

I have done this more times than I can count. But be careful not to trip or fall.

I still haven't had a chance to ride a super fast roller coaster, but I would like to get on one. Then skydiving for sure, at least once in life, hahaha.

Have you ever had any experience related to free fall?

Take 1 minute to share your thoughts and experiences on free fall with me.