If you throw an egg from the space station towards the earth, will it hit the earth successfully?

This article is based on answering similar questions from netizens.

Let me first state the conclusion: it doesn't have to succeed, it's hard not to hit the target, but it won't reach the surface.

This conclusion seems a bit complicated and confusing. What do you mean by "no need to succeed"? It's hard not to hit the target. What I want to express is that no matter how you throw it from the height of the space station, the egg will fall to the earth. There is no success or failure. Only when there is a way to get it away from the earth can it be considered a success.

Why won’t it reach the surface of the earth? This means that although the egg will fall to the earth, it will be burnt and vaporized before it reaches the surface of the earth.

Let's first talk about the operating altitude and speed of the space station. Both China's Tiangong Space Station and the International Space Station are operating at an altitude of about 400 kilometers above the earth's surface, circling the earth at a speed of about 7.6 kilometers per second. This speed is called the orbital speed. At this speed, it will not be pulled down by the earth's gravity, nor will it escape the earth's gravity and fly far away.

A person can never jump high enough on the ground, let alone escape the earth's gravity and float into the air. This is because the speed of the jump is too slow. If the speed reaches 7.9 kilometers per second, it will be able to jump up and not fall down, and will circle around the earth. This speed is called the orbital speed, which is the speed at which the aircraft resists the earth's gravity and achieves balance.

According to the law of universal gravitation, the formula for orbital velocity is derived: v=√(GM/R). Here v is the orbital velocity, in m/s (meters per second); G is the gravitational constant, which is the gravitational force of two 1kg (kilogram) objects with a mass center of 1 meter apart, about 6.67*10^-11N·m^2/kg^2; M is the mass of the celestial body, in kg; R is the distance between the flying object and the mass center of the celestial body, in meters.

Based on this, we can calculate that the orbiting speed required for a space station at an altitude of 400 kilometers is about 7662m/s. The space station can only maintain this altitude if it keeps this speed. If the speed slows down, the altitude will gradually decrease and eventually fall into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up.

If there is no atmospheric resistance, the aircraft can theoretically maintain its speed and fly forever in space. However, at an altitude of 400 kilometers, although the atmosphere is already very thin, it is not a vacuum, so there is still resistance. In this way, if the space station does not have power replenishment, its speed will slow down every day, and once it slows down, it will be pulled down by the earth's gravity.

According to some information, if there is no power to increase speed, the space station will fall 100 to 150 meters every day. This problem was taken into consideration when the space station was designed, and it will use its own rocket engine to boost the speed and maintain the orbiting speed. Therefore, any space station will consume several tons of fuel every year, and this fuel needs to be replenished regularly by spacecraft.

The solar panels of the space station can also provide some power, but they are generally only used for the operation of the space station equipment. This is also the reason why the space station cannot fly too high, otherwise the maintenance and operation costs will be higher.

When a space station is scrapped, it will no longer provide fuel to increase its speed and orbit, and it will fall into the atmosphere and burn up. Due to the huge size of the space station, some parts may not be completely burned, so the remaining parts will fall to the earth.

In order to prevent these debris from falling into densely populated areas and causing personal injury and property damage, the abandoned space station must retain some fuel and allow the ground command center to remotely control and adjust the crash site before it crashes, trying to make it fall into an empty desert or ocean.

The crash of the former Soviet Union's Mir space station is an example. The space station began service in 1986 and was officially retired on August 28, 1999. From that day on, Mir entered a state of unpowered self-destruction. Without power support, Mir's orbit gradually decreased, and finally fell into the atmosphere and burned on March 20, 2001. Its wreckage crashed in a designated area in the South Pacific.

Before the Mir space station crashed, ground control personnel activated the station's reserved fuel and, through three ignitions, achieved active crashing into the designated sea area. If it had been left to crash on its own, it might have stayed in the sky for a while, and the crash site would have been uncontrollable. If it had crashed into a densely populated area in a large city, the damage would have been immeasurable.

Now, the International Space Station is old and weak, and NASA has begun to consider how to put it to rest. It is estimated that in a few years, it will be buried in the same way as the Mir Space Station.

Now let’s talk about the egg that was thrown out of the space station. After seeing the fate of the space station, you probably know the ending of this egg.

In fact, throwing an egg in the space station is not an easy task. It requires a series of complicated ways to open the hatch, and the astronauts must be fully armed and wear protective clothing to get out of the cabin before they can throw the egg. The International Space Station and our Tiangong Space Station have both introduced the astronauts' out-of-cabin process on TV, so everyone should be familiar with the astronauts' out-of-cabin process, which is really a very troublesome process.

The astronaut in the clumsy space suit can't exert much strength at all, and the egg is fragile and needs to be taken out carefully. Therefore, no matter how hard he or she tries, the speed of the thrown egg cannot be very fast, so the acceleration can be basically ignored, which can completely rule out the speed of the egg to escape the gravity of the earth.

The speed of escaping from the Earth's gravity is called the escape velocity, which follows the escape velocity formula: v=√(2GM/R). According to this formula, at the height of the space station, the escape velocity is about 10836m/s. As long as you don't reach this speed, you will eventually be pulled down by the Earth's gravity.

Therefore, no matter whether the astronaut throws the egg forward or backward, left or right, up or down, the egg will move at a speed similar to that of the space station, maintaining a speed of about 7,662 meters per second, and still circling the earth. However, without the power support, the egg will slowly decrease in speed and altitude due to the slight air resistance.

This egg will experience the torment of both cold and hot in space, and it has long been neither raw nor cooked. When there is no sunlight, the temperature drops to more than minus 100 degrees Celsius, and it is frozen hard; when the sun shines, the temperature instantly rises to more than 100 degrees Celsius, and it is cooked thoroughly. I hope it will not burst. (Everyone is welcome to discuss whether it will burst)

The egg floated alone in the hellish torture for several years. As the altitude decreased, the density of the atmosphere became higher and higher, and the speed of its orbital fall became faster and faster. After two or three years, when the egg reached an altitude of 100 kilometers above the surface, it still maintained a speed of about 7 kilometers per second. This speed collided with the dense atmosphere and became hotter and hotter.

When it reaches an altitude of about 80 kilometers, the temperature will rise to over 1000℃. The eggs will quickly be burnt and scorched, and eventually burn violently, turning into a bright light.

If it is a dark night and you happen to be watching from below, you will see a flash of light. Thousands of small meteors disappear in the atmosphere every day on Earth, and this egg will become one of them.

It hit the Earth, but it couldn't reach the surface. This is the fate of the egg, do you believe it? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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