Can we not just ask them to look at the speedometer?

This sounds like Stevo's momentum rule.

If a Saints player moving at 17000 mph throws a 'flat ball' which is 16999 mph moving forwards, is it a forward pass

I am out every night its passes, most evening lately have resulted in the cloud ruining any chance. Was out for the metor shower last night also, only saw one , boo hoo.... Love the ISS, blows my mind when I see it pass over us. It only takes 2 minutes to cover the length of the UK, and doesnt pay the M6 Toll either !

Only at the equator. The speed tails off down to zero as you move towards either pole, so the speed of the ISS relative to an observer on the surface of the Earth will depend on the latitude of the observer.

sometimes i see orange/reddish light,s is that the ISS or is it the one where its extremely brighter than the normal stars??
ta.

True enough.
It just gives an idea of the speed of the ISS.
If the Earth at the equator is going at over 1,000 miles/hr and the ISS is in a lowish orbit and it's doing 15.7 orbits a day and say happened to be orbiting around the equator (for the sake of the fag-packet maths argument), it's not hard to see that it's doing around 17,000 miles an hour.



Fag-packet maths coming up......


4230ish/4000ish (radii of orbits) X 25,000ish/24 (speed of Earth's rotation at equator) X 15.7 = 17,295 ish.
Near enough ...

Best thread for ages this. I've evernoted it.

The easiest way to picture the situation is to imagine that the Earth is a stationary object. The ISS flies at a certain height and the distance it travels in one orbit is the circumference of that circle.

So you know the distance (ie far one orbit is), and you can easily time how long one orbit takes.

And the speed in kph or mph is simply the distance travelled in one orbit, divided by the time it takes.

(In fact the height of the ISS varies between 370-460 km) above the surface of the Earth, and the speed varies between about 7.7-7.6 km per second).

You could make a case for the ISS travelling at vastly different speeds, and it is (for example if you factor in the rotation of the Milky Way, or indeed the speed of the Milky Way) but those factors are not relevant as whatever other components there may be in the motion of the ISS, still in the orbit it is in, it must travel at the speed it does in order to stay in orbit.

Your perspective on Earth isn't important either. If you are on the North Pole then your speed with the rotation of the Earth is nil (you just rotate once every 24 hours as the Earth spins); and if you're on the equator then you are rotating, with the spin of the Earth, at a bit over 1,000 mph. But that's not relevant to you, because in reality we are all stuck at ta point on the surface of the Earth, and what speed our rotational component is, makes no difference to us.

What you are seeing is probably Mars, the other stationary bright light is Venus (or the Moon

) The ISS is a white light but is moving across from West to East at quite a speed.

So .. Earth is rotating at 1k MPH ( I understand the 1 rotation per day equals 1k MPH at the surface ) and it suddenly stopped turning , anyone stood on the Equator would continue moving forwards at that speed . Ouch .
If Earth ceased rotating the ISS would continue travelling round in orbit at a speed of 17k MPH (ish) ?
Oooh ! That brings more questions . If Earth is rotating at such a high speed (at the equator )how do aeroplanes manage to move in both directions around it ? It would make sense that you only have to get yourself clear of the ground and stay static to have Earth move underneath you . You could be a thousand miles away from your start point in an hour . But it doesn't work like that does it . That would mean that a plane travelling in the opposite direction at over a thousand miles an hour to make any progress at all . I assume that it is possible for this scenario to happen , but at what altitude .
Does the ISS travel in the opposite direction to Earth's rotation to enable such high speeds ? And how is it powered to keep it at that velocity ?


I really should be saving questions like this to amuse myself if ever I were to find myself on a seemingly endless walk . Oh ! *cough* @james2odsal*cough*

Spot the blatant plug

If Earth ceased rotating the ISS would continue travelling round in orbit at a speed of 17k MPH (ish) ?
Would the answer to this one be that it would slow to 16K MPH ?

I sense you are taking the mickey.