My question is this:
In a descending aircraft, it is only the illusion of weightlessness because one is falling at the same rate as the aircraft. Gravity is still pulling on one's organs the same was as on the ground. This is probably why people throw up, because their bodies feel the directional pull of gravity but their eyes are showing a different experience.
In true outer space, people are far enough from the gravitational pull of the earth to be in true weightlessness. Blood flow is harder without the pull of gravity, digestion is harder, excretion is harder, and so on and on.
In this case, was the capsule far enough from earth to be true weightlessness or was it simply at the top of a parabola?
-PJ
Wrong! People vomit because they are unaccustomed to weightlessness - because our entire organism (inner ear, visual cues and processing, etc.) has evolved to function under conditions of 1 g.
Regards,
The answer to your query is they are NOT far enough.
Consider, even if in “orbit”, it’s the same exact thing. Consider what an orbit is... you are actually falling to earth, at the same rate as the earth is moving behind you. Therefore, you stay aloft, because with a round earth, this continues without air resistance. An orbit is falling while moving horizontally with the earth moving behind.
If you are in a container with no windows, you’d not be able to discern any differences. With windows, you’d see the various scenarios that “caused” the weightlessness.
That isn't just a glib assessment. Run a DuckDuckGo search on "Einstein's Equivalence Principle".
Old Albert daydreamed quite a bit about people falling off the roofs of buildings. This would be warped in 99.999% of the population, but turned into (warped) brilliance by Albert Einstein, part of what lead to his formal creation of the concept of Space-Time.
Einstein would disagree with you on this.
Why Free-Falling Makes You Weightless, Even In the Presence Of Gravity
# In true outer space, people are far enough from the gravitational pull of the earth to be in true weightlessness.
Well, yes and no. Even folk in true orbit on the ISS are really not experiencing true weightlessness. They are still technically ‘falling’, though their path (hopefully) never actually loses height, because the combination of their speed and height equals the curvature of the earth.
The folks who went to the moon did actually experience true weightlessness, as they actually reached the point where the the earth and moon’s gravity were in balance.
You’re pretty much going to have =some= gravitational effects anywhere in the solar system, though you might not be able to actually notice it.
I don't mean to pile on (well, yes I do...) but you must realize that a body orbiting the Earth (like the International Space Station) is still fully under the influence of Earth's gravity, and so are the people inside. Both are just in a perpetual state of free-fall around the Earth, so their relative motion with each other gives the illusion of zero gravity.
Even the Apollo Astronauts who went to the Moon were under 99% of Earth's gravitational pull, which is why the Moon orbits the Earth.
Descending inside the fuselage of an aircraft is exactly the same as orbiting the Earth.