Re: Towards the autonomous lifter - electrostatic voltage generators.

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Bob (R.A.) Jones" <a1accounting@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Ed,

> Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> "What's more, there's practically no
> gravity out there so you don't need lift in the first place!"
>
> Not so.  In an orbiting spacecraft there is little apparent gravity
> because the gravitational acceleration is cancelled by the centrifugal
> acceleration due to its orbital velocity.  For a hovering object the
> acceleration due to gravity at an altitude H is equal to g * (H/Re)^2,
> where Re is the earth's radius in the same units (inches, miles, light
> years, etc.) as the altitude.
>

I don't think that is the usual way of explaining the apparent absence of
gravity in orbit.
The concept of centrifugal acceleration would require the object  to be
mechanically connected to the center of rotation and the contents would not
appear weightless.
I thing you probably need to swap the position of your H and Re ie inverse
square

The usual explanation is that the spacecraft and its contents are in  is
free fall i.e. the spacecraft and contents all accelerating by what the g is
at that height (or very very nearly so).
The classical explanation  says what would happen if you fired a cannon ball
horizontally. If you fired it sufficiently fast though it would fall to the
ground (still subject to g) because of the curvature of the earth it would
not ever reach the ground and eventually hit the back of the cannon ignoring
air resistance and obstacles.

Robert (R. A.) Jones
A1 Accounting, Inc., Fl
407 649 6400