What would be the difference in damage done to your foot, if you dropped 200 pounds of hard weight from your hands, on earth compared to on the moon? AskScienceDiscussion

I'm currently reading pushing ice by Alistair Reynolds. He mentions the inertia of an object being very dangerous when people are carrying very heavy loads in a low gravity environment, even though the object is light to carry. I get that inertia would cause damage, like if I was hit by a fast object in zero gravity it could still kill me as a bullet doesn't need gravity to kill me on earth, but if a massive object has a low weight, light enough to carry it, why doesn't it do the same damage as a light object on earth would? Where am I going wrong?

Edit: Got back home to get the quotes because I probably botched my explanation/question without providing them. My question is terrible. I meant to convey that it was the same object with the same mass from earth to the moon but on Earth it weigh something like 200 lbs.

There are two separate occasions so far. I figured because of that it cant be a mistake, and because he did his homework for the book, he has more credibility than i do, even in my own mind.

She heaved at the slab until it lurched free from the ice in which it >had buried itself. It came up easily then, although it still felt heavier >in her hands than anything she had ever handled under Janus's >gravity. "Feels like a slab of concrete, or something. I don't want to >even think about what this would weigh under a gee. We've got to >be talking tonnes"

"Be careful with it" Thale said. "It'll still have inertia. If you drop it >on your foot, you will feel it"

Second instance: two people fight over a large aquarium filled with water and fish

For a moment Svetlana had it, but while she could manage the >tank's weight easily enough, it still had a tonne of inertia. In that >one fumbling instant it had picked up dangerous speed. It was like >trying to catch a falling engine block.

The Tank slipped from her grip. She tried to catch it, but it was >already on its way to the ground, picking up momentum with every >second it fell. The stiff articulation of the suits made it impossible for >them to dive down and catch it. All they could do was watch as the >tank rammed the floor like a rudderlocked supertanker.

I guess i just don't get the dropping part. I understand if the thing was to get up to speed falling, but under low gravity, it shouldn't fall very fast if its light enough to be picked up right? Or does that depend on the atmosphere, like if you dropped a feather in a vacuum? If gravity on earth was severely reduced, to the point where I could easily raise my refrigerator to the ceiling and let it go, would it slowly crash through my floor(assuming a fridge could do that under normal circumstances being dropped from that distance)?

Submitted February 07, 2015 at 07:45AM by bruceangusburns http://ift.tt/1zZ9vmm AskScienceDiscussion