16. Could we wear gravity boots or some weights or shoes to hold us down? Would it be possible to fall right off a planet or the Moon? Could we just float away and be lost forever? (A K2S Question)

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Weighted shoes would help you to function more normally in a reduced gravity environment; however if there were no gravity, weighted shoes would not help. Every celestial body has a specific escape velocity—this is the speed that needs to be achieved to escape the gravitational pull. For the Earth, this speed is approximately 25,000 miles per hour (mph). For the Moon, it is about 5,300 mph. On the asteroid Ceres, the largest known asteroid in the solar system, it is about 1,000 mph, so on all of these celestial bodies it would be impossible to move fast enough to just float away.

Answer provided by Dana S. Klein & D. Brooke Owens


Image:K2S logosmall.jpg Question and Answer extracted from the book Kids to Space - by Lonnie Schorer


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