stoutfellow

I seem to recall someone complaining about an elementary physics error in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I think I just hit the relevant passage.

If you took a long fall inside a ship - say, down the engine shaft on a big homesteader - you'd have enough time to shout the word "falling!" This would prompt the local AI to turn off the adjacent artigrav net. Your descent would abruptly end, and you'd be free to drift over to the nearest railing.

Force equals mass times acceleration; cancel the force, you cancel the acceleration. This does diddly-squat to the velocity, which will persist until another force is applied - e.g., by contact with the other end of the engine shaft.

:shakes head: