Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Phil is right.

I don't get it
Daniel — (archived)

Drop somebody from a fixed platform about a thousand miles out in space and you'd have another situation altogether.

What kind of fixed platform do you have in mind? How could anything be "fixed", i.e zero tangential velocity, without falling to Earth anyway?

Do you mean temporarily, instanteously fixed?

At a thousand miles, or 1600 km altitude, the orbital velocity is about 7 km per second.

So, your "fixed scenario" is good for only 2 instances I can think of:

1) Emergency egress from a Space Elevator with return to Earth

2) A massive deceleration to stop while still in orbit. I don't know if that's viable or not. It would have to be extremely sudden - hence setting up massive and dangerous G forces - anything less than very sudden deceleration and the orbit would instead simply decay as per normal, and you'd be re-entering the atmosphere with full heat effects, before you knew it. Sure you'd have a bit more leeway a thousand miles up than 200 miles up, but not much.

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