Space VS Orbit

Movie "Hidden Figures" has a nice explanation of the need to change from a circular to an elliptic trajectory in order to deorbit and return back to Earth. Nice subject!

Great Tim :-). The first use of parabolic and ballistic was a bit sudden - perhaps it just needs good visuals support at that point. Trampoline example good, I was trying to think of an example though where when they imagined it their reference frame travelling with the jumper rather than the trampoline sitting on the ground - the stuff in their stomach when it feels funny is experiencing weightlessness (gross but the general idea).

Robin Hilliard

Good call!

Everyday Astronaut

Great article! I did notice that one occurrence of "karman" was in lower case the the others upper, not that your script will be published. I found the two paragraphs starting "A quick side note" and explaining the all the different terms to be a bit confusing and I'm not sure it adds much to the overall content. Maybe merge the two into "And quick little side note, you might notice that Kerbal Space Program calls it apoapsis and periapsis. That’s because that is actually the generic term for the high and low point of an orbit while apogee and perigee are specific when orbiting the Earth. "

A great piece as we have some to expect! I wonder if the bit about the inverse square law of gravity and the following paragraph might be a bit clearer if the 100Km altitude was compared against the radius of the earth (equatorial is 6378km) - the additional 100Km does not amount to much.

This is great Tim! After doing a read-thru I think it might be worth addressing the term "micro gravity" because NASA throws the term around all the time. Technically there's still some little tiny bit of influence from gravity on orbit right, so not technically right to call it out as Zero-G, even though it is for all practical reasons. https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-microgravity-58.html

This is excellent! The kind of video that brings space down to the EVERYDAY person and not just to those with an understanding of orbital dynamics.

Chris West