Question: -Are there any places that you can become weightless other than space? -Why is the Moon moving away from the Earth? Will it just keep on going?

Martin Archer answered on 13 Mar 2013:

Wow lots of great questions.

The feeling of weightlessness comes from being in freefall where the only force acting on you is gravity. This is the case when you’re in orbit. Felix Baumgartner would have been weightless for a few seconds after his sky dive started because the atmosphere would have been so thin too. We can also become weightless on so called “vomit comets” – planes which drop in the same way a projectile would. In fact this is how they filmed the weightless scenes in the film “Apollo 13”.

The moon is moving away from us because of the Earth’s tides. The Moon is kept in orbit because of Earth’s gravity, but the Moon’s gravity causes tidal bulges. The Earth makes this bulges spin a bit faster because of friction which then gives the Moon a bit more energy. It’s this small amount of energy that is slowly pushing the Moon away. The further away it gets, the smaller the effect will be so it probably won’t go on forever.