OK, this is dumb, but it’s gone through my head a couple times. I’ve seen a few science fiction movies and shows where the people in the spaceship use a gravity assist and lean into the turns like they’re driving NASCAR or riding a roller coaster.
I think they wouldn’t feel the acceleration (vector change) because gravity is doing the acceleration on every molecule and there would be nothing to lean against. I’m often wrong though. Someone smarter than I am have some insight?
EDIT: For what it’s worth, I guess I shouldn’t have used the Expanse clip as it upset some people. I just used it for an example of what I was asking. The question is this: Under little or no thrusters, would you feel a gravity assist? Even a radical one that changes your direction 90 degrees and greatly increases your velocity?
In that Expanse clip Kamal is leaning around just like I am when in combat or hooning in Elite.
In both cases, neither Kamal nor I feel any extra acceleration, sitting in a comfortable 0 or 1 G constantly. Leaning around is just a human thing. (While Kamal is using attitude thrusters to rotate the ship around, assuming the pilot’s station is at or near the ship CoM as would be desireable for a spaceship, he would feel very little acceleration from that)
But in my case, if I were actually pulling these maneuvers in real life, I’d need to be highly trained on a centrifuge, strapped in tightly, wear a G-suit, have some cybernetic enhanchements and still not only moving around in the seat but black out regularly. Ships in Elite can easily pull 20 or 30 G-s, 3 to 4 times more than modern jet fighters can and 30 to 50 times more than any near-future spaceships can. Realistically, with currently viable drive tech (which includes nuclear propulsion schemes from NERVA to nuclear pulse drive) we’re talking about 0.1…0.5 G accelerations for spaceships. Torchships could handle maybe 1 or 2 G-s, comparable to what a street-legal sports car can do.