If I died in space, would I fall forever or would gravity keep me up?

Question

My friend did a presentation on Charon (Pluto's moon) and someone asked her ," If too many people went on the moon, would it fall?" And she said that gravity would keep it up. So I was wondering.

Answer 1

you wouldn't fall as falling is a relative term to another solid body..... if you died in space you'd float forever, crash into a planet/moon/asteroid with no atmosphere, burn up in one with an atmosphere....

just depends on the trajectories of nearby objects, and your body's trajectory.

oh yeah, forgot about black holes...

Answer 2

The moon cannot "fall" because it is in constant motion around the Earth. This is why the Moon never spirals into the Earth, it's always spinning but never sucked in by the Earth's gravity. The centripetal force created by the motion cancels out the force of gravity.

And if you died in space, you'd wouldn't be "falling" in the sense of the word because you'd have to figure out, what were you falling into? I fell into the ground, I fell into the tree, I fell into this, I fell into that, etc. Those are all relative, so in space what would you be falling into? You'd be "floating", and perhaps eventually you might be drawn into the gravitational field of a planet or other celestial body. Then you'd "fall" to said body like a meteor or enter orbit and be spinning like the Moon. As mentioned above, the inverse square law helps determine the gravitational force of an object on another object, or you can use universal gravitation law.

Answer 3

Gravity is the force that attracts an object to a larger, heavier one, such as a planet. Since there's no gravity in space, you wouldn't be able to fall anywhere unless you came into the atmosphere of a planet.

Answer 4

You'd be passed through various time consistancies. You may float... you may be pulled by gravity... you may even be seperated atom by atom by a black hole

Answer 5

The moon's mass is 7.3477×10^22 KG.  Assuming an average mass of 70 kg per person, then it would take 10 billion, billion people to even reach 1 percent of the moon's mass.

Any object that orbits the Earth falls at the same rate.  So even if 10 billion, billion people went to the moon, it would still orbit the Earth at the same rate, no real change.

The only real way for the moon to start to fall towards Earth if the moon's mass increased by a LOT more than 10 times.  And guess how many people would be?

Answer 6

In answer to your first question, you would keep moving in whatever direction you started out with.  Only if you were acted upon by another force, would you change direction (unless you ran headlong into something in your way).  This is all based on Newton's laws of motion.  Your friend was right.  If enough people could stand on Charon, it's mass would increase (infinitesimally), and it would continue doing what it has always done.

Answer 7

In the movie, 2001, one of the two men aboard the spacecraft had his tether cut. He was helpless. They didn't show it but you can bet his blood was boiling. After a few seconds he stopped kicking and such. After his buddy rescued his body and failed to have HAL open the pod door, he just let his dead friend loose and drift of into space. The deceased simply kept on going slowly rotating and drifting away. The truth is, the body would take up its own orbit around the sun. I couldn't imagine what they would call it, but there you go.

Answer 8

Even if you moved the entire human population to the Moon the mass would be negligeable compared to that of the Moon itself, so there would be no noticeable change in the orbit.

Answer 9

Neither, Ogre would eat you once you get up there.

Answer 10

Wow, this is a cool question. Thank you for asking it. I have no idea about an answer but I am glad to see questions like this listed up here... :-)

Answer 11

It depends on how far into space you are. If you too far away from Earth's gravitational field (gravity decreases in an inverse square i.e. double the distance quarter the gravitational force)you could drift for ever in space. If you are in a stable in stable orbit you would keep going round the earth for ever. If you are in an unstable orbit you would eventually fall into earth and burn up on reentry. So there is no one answer.

Answer 12

However many people went ot the moon, they would add as much angular momentum to keep their mass in orbit as with the rest of the moon.  That is, assuming they went there the normal way, by matching its velocity, and not just dropping on it with zero velocity.  But even then,  It would take quadrillions, quintillions, or sextillions of people to actually affect the momentum of the moon.  I don't have my calculator handy so I can't say exactly how many.