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Re:Space Elevator by hermitcrab on Monday October 20, 2025 @11:26AM (#45645021)
>ChatGpt tells me you'd free fall from 1000 km to 100km in about 8 minutes

You trusted an LLM to do the maths when it is just s = 5t^2?

Re:Space Elevator by kaonwarb on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @01:56AM (#45665340)
Not quite; g drops materially between 100 km and 1000 km. 8 minutes I believe is quite close, whereas 5t^2 (or even 4.9t^2) will lead to underestimating time.
Re:Space Elevator by hermitcrab on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @10:46AM (#45669928)
The radius of the earth is around 6300km. The difference in g at the start (between 6400km and 7400km) is 25%. But gets less as you fall. So it might make somewhere around a 10-15% difference overall? So s=5t^2 is fine unless you need a super accurate figure, in which case you need to do some calculus. I would trust an LLM with calculus even less.