Abstract
The term “microgravity” (µug) describes the state of approximated weightlessness in which the observer does not perceive the acceleration g0 constantly effective on Earth. This state is reached, for example, aboard a space station in an Earth orbit, but also during free fall whenever a body can freely move within the dynamic equi librium of ferees between gravitational force and force of inertia. Physically, gravity cannot be “switched off. In the case of a space station at an altitude of 400 km, for example, gravity still reaches 88% of the value it has on the Earth ’s surface. The centrifugal force resulting from the orbital motion affects the mutual cancellation of both forces. Superior to the equilibrium of forces, perturbing accelerations act in reality, caused by the orbital environment, the space station’s structure or the crew. Therefore, it became a convention to characterize this state by the term of microgravity where “micro ” means considerably smaller than lg, but not always the factor 10-6. In some cases, it would be more appropriate to talk of “milli-g”, i.e. realistically of the range µg to mg.
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Messerschmid, E., Bertrand, R. (1999). Microgravity. In: Space Stations. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03974-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03974-8_8
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