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by narmiouh 75 days ago
I would imagine since they are not circling the earth, that there will be pull of gravity and the camera would start to move relative to the spacecraft. But may not fast enough for a short exposure
3 comments

Once you are out of the atmosphere and turn off your thrusters, you are on "fee fall" and the gravity on the camera, you and the spaceship produce the same acceleration and they cancel and it looks exactly like "zero gravity". It doesn't matter if you are in orbit around the Earth, going to the Moon.
Actually not quite correct. The camera and spaceship will generally have different starting positions of their center of gravity but the same starting velocity, leading them to drift apart.

The only real relevant thing for the photograph is rotation though as long as the camera doesn’t float in front of the window frame, and airflow is probably much more relevant for both points than gravity.

> will generally have different starting positions of their center of gravity but the same starting velocity

That are the tidal forces, they are quite small for a system of the size of Orion.

Right, I was talking technically. That’s what I tried to say in the second paragraph.
The gravity of the Earth (and moon, and everything else) is uniform (i.e. no gradient) on the scale of things the size of that capsule at the distance that capsule is from them, on the order of time of the exposure of that photograph. So the gravity (from any source) will pull on the spacecraft and on the camera in the same fashion.

To fully answer the question, the moon's gravitational gradient does pull on the Earth, the ocean closest to the moon, and the ocean furthest from the moon differently. But those are objects separated by thousands of kilometers, having hours of gravitational influence acting upon them.

They’re not circling the Earth, but they’re still orbiting it. Their orbit is highly eccentric, and will be near the Moon at apogee.
Yeah, makes sense. I was assuming the vehicle was also deliberately accelerating which would make a difference on a floating camera, but if it isn't, then gravity is the only force and no relative difference.