We don't HAVE to think about it, we have people DOING it in the International Space Station right this very minute. We have had men travel to the moon and land there, and most important, come BACK again. Mostly, except when the rocket engines are firing, which applies G forces to the body as the ship accelerates, it is being in free fall, weightless as the spacecraft is in ballistic flight. It was Isaac Newton who figured out what orbits are all about. He proposed a thought experiment of firing a gun, parallel to the ground. Of course, the projectile would fall to the ground, yes? He proposed using a larger charge of powder, so the projectile would travel further and further. Eventually, if you got the charge just right, the projectile would fall, but the curvature of the Earth below would fall as well, so the curve would match the curve of the sphere below. Neglecting air resistance, and the fact the Earth is not a perfect sphere and such, if you got the charge just right, you would shoot yourself in the back. That is exactly what we DO when we boost something into space. We simply throw it at just the right speed and it circles the Earth in constant free fall, weightless, and we throw it high enough so it is outside the atmosphere. A satellite more than about 250 miles up will be in orbit for all practical purposes, forever, since there is very little air resistance at that altitude. The 6 ton satellite that came down recently was up at about 320 miles. It had small rockets aboard and fuel so it could move around. When they decommissioned it in 2005, they expended all of the remaining fuel to bring it down closer to the Earth so what little drag there IS would eventually slow it enough for it to fall and burn up, which is exactly what it DID. Note that it took 6 years to finally drop low enough to come down by itself.
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Mind numbing boredom followed by moments of sheer terror
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Fantastic. Until you get cancer from cosmic rays.
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boring and silent... except when you run out of fuel.