Skylab, the first US space station, fell to earth in thousands of pieces in 1979, most of them landing in the ocean. Skylab astronauts grew 1 1/2 to 2 1/4 inches due to spinal lengthening and straightening from zero gravity. The cosmos is made up of about 50 billion galaxies. Since 1959, more than 6,000 pieces of space junk have fallen out of orbit, and many have struck the surface of the earth. The surface gravity of Jupiter is more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of the earth. If you could fly across our galaxy from one side to the other in light speed, it would take 100,000 years to make the trip. Each year, the sun loses 360 million tons. Earth is the only planet in our solar system not named after a god.
The Space Shuttle Astronauts in order to achieve orbit of the Earth, had to reach a speed about 50 times that of a .45 caliber bullet. Approximately 10 miles per second. To propel huge objects like the Shuttle to such incredible speed requires the expenditure of enormous amounts of power within a fairly short time. Frank
Yeah, and to think that there are around 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone and most of them have planets surrounding them too.
Yeah, that's true... (My old 17-1/2" Newtonian Reflector...I was only about 64 then and didn't mind jerkin' around a 170 pound Telescope) Harold