OK, this is dumb, but it’s gone through my head a couple times. I’ve seen a few science fiction movies and shows where the people in the spaceship use a gravity assist and lean into the turns like they’re driving NASCAR or riding a roller coaster.

I think they wouldn’t feel the acceleration (vector change) because gravity is doing the acceleration on every molecule and there would be nothing to lean against. I’m often wrong though. Someone smarter than I am have some insight?

EDIT: For what it’s worth, I guess I shouldn’t have used the Expanse clip as it upset some people. I just used it for an example of what I was asking. The question is this: Under little or no thrusters, would you feel a gravity assist? Even a radical one that changes your direction 90 degrees and greatly increases your velocity?

  • TauZero
    26·
    1 year ago

    The Expanse is not a realistic show. I like hard sci-fi, keep hearing the Expanse is ultra-realistic (no ftl, no anti-grav), so I open up a random clip to check it out and what’s the very first thing I see? A guy in a spacesuit standing on a catwalk outside a spaceship under main engine power. Ok, constant 1G acceleration from a magic engine, so far so good… That’s what sci-fi is supposed to be: change one magic thing and one thing only and show the consequences! But then the guy starts space-welding something, and the torch is creating puffs of smoke that effortlessly FLOAT UPWARDS. Whaaat? Ok, I’d understand if the show has to stay within a reasonable budget and can’t afford to film inside a vacuum chamber, but the fucking puffs are already CGI! The lazy no-physics-education artist has failed to seize the one opportunity to show something exotic about living in space: to animate the puffs spreading outward without impedance while falling to the ground.

    I’m glad I didn’t watch the show. If I had seen this clip of the guy zooming along from moon to moon in seconds while leaning into the gravity-assist turns, I would have had an aneurysm.

    • lars@programming.dev
      2·
      1 year ago

      The Expanse is my favorite series and that scene is hands down the dumbest scene in the show. The showrunners actually posted an article before it aired apologizing for it. Well, for the inaccuracies of the gravity assist, not specifically the leaning.

      Overall the show is very good about being scientifically accurate compared to other sci-fi. At least when it’s human technology. The alien tech doesn’t play by the rules.