Image: Rhett Allain. Just someone getting thrown into space. No big deal.
Preemptive notes: Yes, I’m going to get to the physics but there’s some important stuff to discuss first:
SPOILERS. Technically, there are no spoilers here for Fantastic Four First Steps (the movie). I didn’t say that someone was thrown into space. The title just asks a question.
As always, I don’t actually care if this is physically possible or not. It’s a superhero movie — they aren’t suppose to be real. If everything was realistic, it wouldn’t really be that much fun now would it?
You need to be very happy. I was going to title this post with something like “Fantastic Four Fysics” — but I didn’t. You are welcome.
Now for the physics. Could someone (anyone) throw someone (anyone) into space? Let’s do it.
Level 1 Analysis: No Air Resistance and Constant Gravitational Field
You should always start with the simplest case. It’s possible to make things more complicated later. So that’s exactly what we will do. How fast would an object with a mass (m) need to be flung to reach space? Let’s make the assumptions that there is zero interaction with the air and the gravitational field is constant (g = 9.8 Newtons per kilogram).
