Labels:text OCR: WEIGHTLESSNESS EXCURSIONS Mike Mullane, Astronaut Weightlessness is perhaps the most misunderstood concept of the space age. Most people think astronauts are weightless in space because there is no gravity so far from earth. In fact, it is gravity that keeps them in orbit. Without it they would float away; without gravity even the moon would float away. Although the moon's orbit is a thousand times further from us than that of manned spacecraft, the earth's gravitational pull is strong enough to hold it, and the force it exerts on closer objects is stronger still. Astronauts are not weightless because there is no gravity. They are weightless because they are falling. If one were to stand on a bathroom scale in an elevator on the top floor of a skyscraper, one's weight would register on the ...
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