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Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear t1_je7p075 wrote

Astronauts in low earth orbit still feel like they are falling the whole time. Orbit means your velocity perpendicular to the action of gravity matches the rate you would be falling otherwise, resulting in you following a circular path/orbit around the object.

Same principle the vomit comet plane uses, except parallel to earths gravity instead of perpendicular. The plane loses altitude at the same rate you would fall due to gravity, so inside the cabin it’s as if you are weightless. But you feel the acceleration the whole time.

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amitym t1_je89s60 wrote

It doesn't have to do with inertia. Astronauts orbiting Earth feel like they're falling, instead of feeling like they're being extruded into a thin bloody dribble, because the pull of gravity is effectively the same at their feet as it is at their heads.

That's not the case when very close outside the Schwarzchild radius of smaller black holes. But at 30 billion solar masses, the Schwarzchild radius is so far out from the singularity that the gravitational gradient is, as around Earth, negligible.

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Plan-B-Rip-and-Tear t1_je8cb19 wrote

I really should have responded to the poster you were responding to rather than you as that’s the question I intended to address about feeling 0 g’s, not gravitational gradients on intermediate and stellar sized black holes.

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