In today’s lecture, you stated that a person accelerating downward OR UPWARD does not feel the effects of gravity. How do you explain the g-forces felt by astronauts at escape velocity? – TH
In the lecture, I said that a person who is falling does not feel the effects of gravity, even when they are traveling upward. But when they are falling, they are accelerating downward at a very specific rate—the acceleration due to gravity, which is 9.8 meters/second2 at the earth’s surface. When an astronaut is accelerating upward during a launch, they are not falling and they do feel weight. In fact, because they are accelerating upward, they feel particularly heavy.