Drbazz
- 9
- 0
Are G-forces smaller when traveling in space?
Are G-forces smaller when traveling in space?
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
4 replies · 2K views
Discussion
- 25,837
- 258
Drbazz said:
Hi Drbazz!
G-forces are the force you feel when your spaceship fires its rockets.
If the rockets aren't firing, then there's no G-force.
- 3,510
- 1,073
No, they are the same.
Note that this means that a real spaceship carrying people wouldn't really be able to accelerate by more than 10 m/s^2 or so, at least not for very long.
(this is why the Starship Enterprise is equiped with inertial dampers
)
phlegmy
- 120
- 0
[OT]
lol i love references to star trek,
my personal favourite is the "heissenberg uncertainty compensators"!
was living with a theoretical physicist at the time, had us laughing for hours!
- 2,207
- 16
You have to understand, G-forces is just a measure of the acceleration a body is undergoing, put into terms of the acceleration of objects in the Earth's gravitational field close to the surface.
Perhaps you're thinking that when they say a jet takes off with 5G acceleration, if this number would change in space. The answer is not really (assuming the jet works in space) because this acceleration is horizontal so it isn't really affected by gravity. Assuming the jet managed to produce the same amount of thrust, the "G-force" or accelerations felt by any passengers, would be the same as on earth.