NOTAM: Hudson Bay region "missing gravity"

[Rudy]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/enviro ... ravity.htm

[GoinNowhereFast]

Does that mean that airplanes will cruise faster and stall slower?

[planett]

Does that mean that airplanes will cruise faster and stall slower?

They already do in the north, just ask your local lodge owner.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I can just see it now......."of course you can take that extra fat American fisherman, there is less gravity here "

[TG]

Actually, the effect of gravity diminish with altitude. Up to the point it reach zero in space.
So technically, you weight less at FL350 then on the ground.

I'm not inventing this, it's a scientist guru who told me so.

[Dagwood]

the effect of gravity diminish with altitude

That is true. The "altitude" is being measured from the center of the Earth. So as the Earth is not a perfect sphere, but flat on the poles and fat at the equator, a person actually weighs more at the poles than at the equator.

[aviator2010]

the women do for sure. Here I thought it was just the result of KFC in the northren stores

[squirrely]

the women do for sure. Here I thought it was just the result of KFC in the northren stores

+1

[george sugar]

Actually, the effect of gravity diminish with altitude. Up to the point it reach zero in space.

There are people who have a career in aviation that think gravity is zero in space? Seriously? I despair.

[TG]

There are people who have a career in aviation that think gravity is zero in space? Seriously? I despair.

I should correct for 'deep space'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth

It is a common misconception that astronauts in orbit are weightless because they have flown high enough to "escape" the Earth's gravity. In fact, at an altitude of 400 kilometres (250 miles), equivalent to a typical orbit of the Space Shuttle, gravity is still nearly 90% as strong as at the Earth's surface, and weightlessness actually occurs because orbiting objects are in free-fall.

[george sugar]

What is "deep space" defined as? The gravitational force of any mass is never zero anywhere in the universe; it may be greatly diminished, but it never disappears. However miniscule it may be, each of us experiences the gravitational force of galaxies billions of light-years distant. Wikipedia is a flawed source at the best of times. Orbiting objects are not in "free-fall"; free-fall towards what? Objects orbit because the sum of the attractive gravitational forces they are experiencing are balancing their inertial tendency to move in a straight line tangent away from the more massive body. Perturbations in the gravitational sum as the orbiting system moves through space, or as the system itself orbits another massive body, along with changes in the mass of the objects, eventually causes either the orbit to decay or for the orbiting body to escape the orbital path. A body can only be "weightless" whenever the vector-sum of the accelerating force on the body approaches zero; that is far from the same thing as saying it is not being acted upon by gravity.