>>11620768Orbit happens because planets move fast enough to regain the distance they lost getting sucked into the sun. You can test this with a sheet, a weight, and a coin if you want. If you suspend a sheet from its four corners, and put a weight in the middle, then roll a coin, you can watch orbit happen right in front of you.
But about weightlessness, the reason you can simulate it with a plane is because you can basically throw people in the air hard enough to freefall in the plane, and the plane shields you from air friction, so you cant feel any forces acting on you. However, and I had a misconception about this, the net force acting on you is NOT zero, you just simply cant feel the force of gravity acting on you. If yiu are astute, you might say "well, Anon, then explain why astronauts dont fall to earth then, they have nothing throwing them up into the air on their satellites". Then, if you are fairly smart, you might say, "Ahh! The force of gravity is exponentially less the further away you are!" But, sadly, you would bw wrong, because they arent nearly far enough away for gravity to be negligible. I mean, think about it, the earths gravity is strong enough to keep the fucking moon here! What is actually happening that makes astronauts appear to be weightless, is that they, along with everything around them, are flying around the earth in such a way as to never reach it. This makes it appear as if they have no forces acting on them. They are, however, being dragged into the earth. They just cant tell.
