Why don’t planets fly off into space? What’s keeping them in place? Also try to explain why planets don’t fall directly into the Sun.

Question

Why don’t planets fly off into space? What’s keeping them in place? Try to reason why planets don’t fall directly into the Sun.

Answer 1

Planets don't fly off into space because of the gravitational pull their host stars exert on them. The reasons why they don't fall into their star are.

1. Because space has essentially no drag they don't lose energy that would cause their orbits to decay.(They do but on such a large time scale its null)
2. Planets also are constantly falling towards their star but with elliptical orbits they fall towards to star and then past it, this process repeats endlessly.
3. A good way to think about this is coins in a funnel, they will spin around the center of a funnel for a long time before entering the hole. Except in space there is no friction to slow the "coin" or planet in this case.