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Where does earth end and space begin?

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  • 02-08-2014 2:07am
    #1
    Rucking_Fetard
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,260 ✭✭✭


    http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/where-is-the-border-between-earth-and-space/
    Any time we embark upon a journey, be it a morning commute or a leisurely day trip, we engage in transition. We are a travelling species, which means transitions are commonplace for us, mundane even. But there are some trips that can still fire the human imagination, and none more so than the journey, experienced only by a lucky few, from the surface of Earth to the beginning of space.


    On his 108-minute flight in 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human being in space, reached a peak altitude of 327 kilometres (203 miles), after blasting off the planet atop a mighty Vostok rocket. After launch shook his tiny capsule violently, Gagarin experienced the feeling of weightlessness, and saw the curvature of the Earth first-hand. By all accounts, he crossed the mysterious border between the Earth and space. Or did he? It has been more than half a century since Gagarin’s historic journey, but there is still no universally accepted definition of where space begins....


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    #2
    Mountainsandh
    Registered Users Posts: 6,700 ✭✭✭Mountainsandh


    Watched a few YouTube vids of people launching weather balloons with go pro attached yesterday, it's addictive, how very deeply blue and dark the sky turns up there. Some people had paint balls in a little jar, presumably they expected they would become weightless as they reached space, but I thought it was a bit disappointing as they got shook by the balloon exploding anyway...
    http://youtu.be/xx8aACrPzO4

    This video is great, he managed to stabilise the camera pretty well : http://youtu.be/AjzzqDNiCZw


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    #3
    ps200306
    Registered Users Posts: 1,601 ✭✭✭ps200306


    Mountainsandh wrote: »
    Some people had paint balls in a little jar, presumably they expected they would become weightless as they reached space...
    In spite of the paint balls being included in the video title, they never explained what they were for! Certainly not for weightlessness -- at 100,000 feet they'd still weigh more than 99.99% of what they did on the ground. The OP's article also makes a hash of this: even though it explains that weightlessness in orbit is due to freefall, it also twice suggests that you only have to go up very high to be weightless. Probably the most common misunderstanding about "space".


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