despite what some hollywood movies where rockets fly up and miraculously start floating around tell you, almost all spaceships and satellites that stay in space are in an orbit. if you’re not orbiting a planet/moon/star you’re probably either flying away from it, or about to crash into it.
another way to think of this is spaceships don’t experience “zero gravity”, but “zero g-force”. right now you are experiencing 1g of g-force, because gravity is pushing you into the ground. if you jumped into the air you would feel 0g of g-force… until you hit the ground.
a spaceship in orbit never hits the ground, so it constantly experiences 0g. essentially it is falling… forever.
2 Comments
What figures are you using for the “5x faster than a bullet” line because the velocity of a bullet is a highly variable number based on (among other things) the mass of the bullet, the amount of and composition of the propellant, and the length of the barrel
I don’t know what exact numbers were used, but the 5x figure appears to refer to sniper rifles and other configurations that are specifically optimized for speed over all else. A low earth orbit as pictured in panel three requires speeds from 6880 to 7840 m/s, so a fifth of that would be 1376-1568 m/s, which as far as I know is right at the upper limit of currently achievable bullet speeds.
In other words, objects in LEO are moving five times faster than even the fastest of bullets (and like 10-20x faster than *typical* bullets).