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Weightlessness Depends on Movement

Water color illustration of a person weighing themselves high above the earth.
Credit: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

Astronauts in orbit seem weightless because of how they are moving, not because they are in space. If you could stand at the top of a ladder that extended all the way into space, you would not feel weightless, since you would not be falling.

Categories: Flight Dynamics
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