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I'd love to know the following two facts: how long is the "flight time" between rocket launch and arrival at, say, ISS? Secondly, would astronauts experience zero-g during that trip and for how long?

Philipp
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Dr. Jamie Spencer
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    Two questions should be asked separately. Furthermore, what have your own research yielded? Have you used Internet search engines? – Deer Hunter Mar 11 '15 at 13:41
  • Also, the use of "say" (in the meaning of "for example") makes the question even broader, because technically either an answer would have to account for all possibilities ("what is the flight time to Rosetta?") or it does not need to account for any particular possibility (making a logically valid answer effectively useless). It is best to be as specific as possible about what you want to know, as well as (as indicated by Deer Hunter) state what you have tried yourself to answer your own question (this helps prevent duplication of effort). – user Mar 11 '15 at 14:47
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    Part one of the question is a duplicate of http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4650/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-to-iss After liftoff, it takes about 10 minutes before the main rocket stages burn out (depends on the rocket used). After that, the spacecraft is in zero G. – Hobbes Mar 11 '15 at 14:55
  • Just putting your question title into Google (and ignoring the stackexchange result) gives you a number of articles about various ships and how long they take to get to ISS. Please try to do your own research before posting a question, often you'll find what you're looking for. – Nickolai Mar 11 '15 at 18:37

1 Answers1

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The trip from the surface to low Earth orbit is a matter of about 10 minutes under thrust (as Hobbes commented); the crew on a Soyuz mission to ISS experiences varying accelerations up to about 4g during that time.

Once in orbit, the astronauts are in zero g.

There's then, in the ISS case, a relatively long period of matching orbits with the station; it used to be done over the course of a couple of days; now they do it in 6 hours. The thrusters on the Soyuz are relatively low-powered; the accelerations felt during the intermittent maneuvering burns during orbit matching are about 1/18 g.

Russell Borogove
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