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Launch day! Who's watching? (2 Viewers)

Go for launch! Hopefully they’ve got a heads up set!
 
Davism72 said:
Haha same. It’s my oldest’s 5th birthday today. It was not easy to pull him away from new toys.
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It doesn't get better. Mine are 9 and 11 and still barely paid attention. We got our daughter to look up from Roblox on her Chromebook long enough to see liftoff and that was about it.
 
One Eyed Dollar said:
That was super cool! I got my kids to watch the launch, but now they've gotten bored and wandered off.
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Hahaha yeah same here. Today my oldest turns 14, kinda cool to have something like this on a birthday.
 
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That freaks me out. So cool to see, but I have fear of "heights(?)", just looking at it.
There is ZERO chance that I would do that, even if it were possible, which it is not.
Super cool to see -- just freaks me the hell out!
 
I'm somewhat afraid of heights but it is specific to "standing close to an edge" so floating around in space seems fine :-)
 
navels said:
I'm somewhat afraid of heights but it is specific to "standing close to an edge" so floating around in space seems fine :)
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Technically, they're not floating. They were hurled at ~17,000 miles an hour. Like a fastball, it moves fast enough that it overcomes the force of gravity, but it will eventually slow down due to friction with the air and drop to the ground.

Now, I understand that it's a pretty technical difference, but it may change your perspective with your comment:
navels said:
I'm somewhat afraid of heights but it is specific to "standing close to an edge" so being hurled at 17,000 mph seems fine :)
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ruskba said:
Friction with the what??
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There's still a tiny bit of atmosphere at that height.

I made my son watch a Falcon 9 Starlink launch with me, and I tried to point out to him that if you watch the speed in the lower left corner, after SECO (second engine cutoff) it actually slows down a little bit. I tried to get him to think about why it would slow down up in space after they cut the thrust. He didn't care. :LOL: :laugh:
 
ruskba said:
Friction with the what??
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I meant the baseball has friction with the air. But as One-eyed points out, there is still friction, even way up there. Solar winds, meteoroids, space junk, and even whisps of atmosphere.

Mostly though, I was just admiring the fact that someone thought "hey, let's see how far we can chuck a human", and someone else volunteered.
 
Poker Zombie said:
I meant the baseball has friction with the air. But as One-eyed points out, there is still friction, even way up there. Solar winds, meteoroids, space junk, and even whisps of atmosphere.

Mostly though, I was just admiring the fact that someone thought "hey, let's see how far we can chuck a human", and someone else volunteered.
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Ah yes. I just thought it was a good chance to be snarky.

And I got to watch it with both my kids and even got my wife excited enough to run over as I counted down from 10. Really just blows the mind that dudes are like "You want me to sit on that rocket? Yea, ok I guess."
 
One Eyed Dollar said:
There's still a tiny bit of atmosphere at that height.

I made my son watch a Falcon 9 Starlink launch with me, and I tried to point out to him that if you watch the speed in the lower left corner, after SECO (second engine cutoff) it actually slows down a little bit. I tried to get him to think about why it would slow down up in space after they cut the thrust. He didn't care. :LOL: :laugh:
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Interesting. I assumed it was pointed ever so slightly up so gravity was very slightly decelerating it
 
Frogzilla said:
Interesting. I assumed it was pointed ever so slightly up so gravity was very slightly decelerating it
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That could be part of it too! I'm not a rocket scientist. :) And the rocket hasn't maneuvered into orbit yet at that point, so it could be a combo of friction and gravity slowing it down.

I found this article that explains well how the ISS maintains its orbit:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...e-iss-from-falling-out-of-orbit/#1e92ae457b88

But, remember that Sir Isaac said we needed to be high up to avoid the drag of the air, well even at 250 miles (400 km) there is still a tiny bit of air and it has a small decelerating effect on the ISS. The ISS loses up to 0.1 mph (5 cm/s) of velocity and 330 ft (100 meters) of altitude each day, because of the continual collisions with gas particles. To compensate for this, about once a month the ISS briefly fires its thrusters to regain the lost altitude.
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Otherwise, stuff eventually falls to earth like that old Chinese space station that crashed down recently.
 
One Eyed Dollar said:
That could be part of it too! I'm not a rocket scientist. :) And the rocket hasn't maneuvered into orbit yet at that point, so it could be a combo of friction and gravity slowing it down.

I found this article that explains well how the ISS maintains its orbit:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...e-iss-from-falling-out-of-orbit/#1e92ae457b88



Otherwise, stuff eventually falls to earth like that old Chinese space station that crashed down recently.
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Do you know what they do with all the telecom satellites? Surely most of those don’t have any thrusters
 

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