Astronauts in the ISS appear weightless because the station and everything inside it are continuously falling around Earth together. Gravity is still strong at the station’s altitude.
Astronauts in the ISS appear weightless because the station and everything inside it are continuously falling around Earth together. Gravity is still strong at the station’s altitude.
The useful way to think about it is through orbital free fall and microgravity. That mechanism explains the observation without needing a special exception for the everyday example in the title. The details can vary with conditions, materials, species, location, or technology, but the central idea stays the same.
So the short version and the deeper version agree. Understand why orbiting astronauts feel weightless despite Earth’s gravity. Where the subject has exceptions or competing explanations, those should be stated rather than hidden behind a neat one-line rule.