Ok dumb question. If we hypothetically went to say, the moon and jumped off. Lets say we have all of the equipment necessary to survive, where would we float to? I know that may sound ridiculous as my knowledge of the universe and its contents and how it functions are minute. If we would only gravitate back to the moon due to the pull, how about if someone just opened the spaceship door on an expedition to fix a satellite and let us go. Would we really go anywhere or just gravitate back to the spaceship?

Just as when we jump up on earth and the earh pulls back down, the moon would do the same thing; only to about 1/6 the degree as that is what the moons mass is compared to the earth. If you watch the clips you can see that they can jump a bit higher...You wouldnt be able to reach enough speed to be able to actually reach orbit from the moon just by jumping, but perhaps if something had very little mass to pull us back, then it might be possible...a tiny asteroid maybe...that would be assuming that there would be no other large bodies of mass working to attract us towards them...

If you stepped out of a space ship, a space ship does have a small bit of mass compared to our bodies; so over a period of time you would slowly begin drifting back together...two massess are going to be attracted to each other; the way that the moon and the earth hang on to each other...

Fluff has essentiually got the answer for you.


Jumping up on the Moon results in nothing more than a longer time aloft than you would experience on Earth, and a return to the ground just like on Earth, but at a slower rate due to the gravity being 1/6 that of Earth. You're never going anywhere for long jumping off the surface of the Moon.


As pertains to the spacechip, and someone opening the hatch and just letting one go...


Well, that's a little nebulous in description....but I should say we've done such a thing many, many times since about 1965. Everyone's tethered, so no one's floating away. If we were fixing a satellite, as STS -125 will be doing in August (Hubble Space telescope repair flight), you can be assured that the EVA crew will be safety tethered so as not to get moving away from things and get lost in space, so-to-speak.

In the case you present:




...it depends upon what you, as the astronaut actually did.
If you didn't have a safety tether, and you decided just to move out of the hatch and steady yourself and let go...you'd likely stay right where you were. If you decided to push off in some direction, I'm afraid you'd keep on moving with no way of coming back to the ship, and your oxygen would eventually run out, and you'd quietly pass out from hypoxia and then die...quite some distance from the spacecraft....

Thanks fluff! Great answer.
MID that's kind of what I meant, if we weren't tethered and pushed off from a space ship what would determine where we'd float to provided we have supplies? I mean on earth if we let a balloon go, there's wind and stuff and it would take on some direction. I was just wondering if theres no wind in space what direction would we go. Would we continue on that direction or if a comet went by would be get caught in the tail wind? lol Or would we eventually get sucked towards something. I think Im making this more complicated. lol

Essentially, if un-tethered, you will move in the direction you push off, and you won't be coming back. There are factors that might influence that, depending on which direction you pushed off, and what your relative speed was at push-off. If on orbit around the earth, you could do anything from change orbital plane to enter a different orbital altitude, perhaps one that was more elliptical or higher or lower than your spacecraft. You might even deteriorate and re-enter the atmosphere sometime in the near future, again depending on exactly what your velocity and direction of push off was.

No cometary tail will affect you...way too far off...about the only thing that would effect you would be the gravity of the Earth.

I think the bottom line is that if you push off of a spacecraft without a tether attached to you...you're in for a long lonely ride someplace, and you'll not live to tell about it!