@flat_earth_flowers: Space Dragon going hard! Thruster’s looking like a cosmic Rave 🤣 ##SpaceLit ##thrusterparty #D#DragonModeO#OrbitalAF educational purposes!

Derek👽 :

It’s not that the RCS thrust is “pushing against the vacuum”, but rather that it’s taking advantage of newtons 3rd law. In order for momentum to be conserved, the thrust of the rcs going out will have an equal and opposite effect on the spacecraft. Imagine throwing a baseball while floating in space, the baseball will fly off in one direction quite fast, and you will fly off in the opposite direction very slowly compared to the baseball. (p=mv). RCS thrusters expel a little bit of mass with a lot of velocity, so it has a good enough momentum to allow for small adjustments to be made to the spacecraft.