The Astronaut in Flight

Let us see what happens as the rocket takes off with our astronaut securely strapped into his capsule in the nose of the great missile.

As you sit in a chair the seat supports you by pushing against you. The astronaut's seat not only supports him but lifts him up at very high speeds. It pushes against him far more strongly than our chair does against us. We say that he is under the strain of several gravities, if his seat was attached to a weighing machine it would show several times more than his normal weight.

When the rocket has reached a speed which will let the capsule travel on freely (in the correct orbit and without the need of motors), the rocket and capsule are separated. The astronaut is now in a strange state of weightlessness. If his space-craft was large enough, and he was not strapped down, he would float about like a thistle-down. To move about he would have to pull himself hand over hand along a wall, or kick against a wall, in which case he would move away in a straight line until he hit the opposite side.