Re: Towards the autonomous lifter - electrostatic voltage generators.

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

" > 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"

	First, I agree that equation is upside down!  Otherwise we'd all be
flying off into space!  Sloppy poo! As for your main point, I guess that
depends on how one defines centrifugal acceleration.  The one I'm
familiar with equates to angular acceleration  (i.e. one and the same)
without regard to what induces that angular acceleration. (No mechanical
connection implied.)  I just did a web search and consistently get the
same definition I'm using here.

Ed