False Things About Astronauts You've Been Believing

One of the silliest astronaut myths is the one that has astronauts floating off the surface of the Moon but for their super-heavy space boots. The source of this myth seems to be some confusion about gravity, or the lack thereof in outer space — astronauts float around in the space station, so there's no gravity in space. Which means astronauts had to wear heavy boots in order to not float around when they were on the Moon.

So that's ridiculous on a couple of levels, the first being this one: If the Moon had no gravity, it really wouldn't matter how heavy your boots were, you'd still float away. And second, floating in the air is not like floating in water — extra weight doesn't make you sink. And third, that's just dumb.

According to physicist Stephanie Chasteen, people get this wrong because they use their own world experiences to make assumptions about why things happen the way they do in space. Most of us are familiar with the concept of buoyancy — if light things float in water and heavy things sink, then floating in space must be governed by similar forces. In fact, what is true is that the Moon does have gravity, it's just not as powerful as the Earth's gravity. So the astronauts didn't float away because they were held to the surface by gravity, and it had nothing to do with their footwear.