So then gravity would be like your hand's grip preventing the bucket from flying away when you swing a bucket of water?
If this is the case then I think I'd understand the way planets don't fall into the sun better. The way I've heard it described before as something like 'forever falling into the sun' confusing.
The question is whether the sun will go nova before or after we (or our sterilized remains) finally arrive :)
That's not the only effect, all of this is counteracted by the decrease in mass of the sun and the tidal interaction between the sun and its planets (which slows down the rotation of the sun), both of these should push the earth outward from the sun.
I'm not sure how it all works out (whether it is a net positive or a net negative) but it can't be much or we'd have drifted out of the zone where life is sustainable long ago.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment
and lots of links referenced from there.
Amazing precision, I still find it quite incredible that such a distance could be reliably measured to such precision and that meaningful conclusions could be drawn from those measurements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_acceleration
Speaking about the rotation of a gaseous body is a bit tricky anyway, not all parts of the sun rotate equally fast. (inside/outside, equatorial/polar).
I think that is probably a relatively reasonable way of considering it, but to be clear, centrifugal force isn't actually something that exists. It wouldn't be drawn in a free body diagram unless the diagram was drawn with a non-inertial reference frame, but even then it is only drawn so that equations meant for inertial reference frames will still work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force_(rotating_ref...)
I think the best way to get an intuitive understanding of how orbit works is with Newton's cannonball thought experiment, and perhaps playing around with a simulation of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_cannonball
I didn't understand the elliptical orbit at first and was writing a supplementary question here but as i did so the following explanation occurred to me.
As it spirals outward it's no longer travelling at right angles to the force of gravity so now gravity exerts some force parallel and opposite to its direction of travel and starts to slow it down.
It slows down at a rate greater than the required orbital speed does and eventually it's travelling at less than orbital speed and starts to travelling closer to earth again and now gravity starts to act to increase its speed because the ball is again not travelling perpendicular to the force of gravity but this time gravity's pull increases its speed.
Now the ball's speed increases faster than the required orbital speed does until it exceeds orbital speed again.
And so ad infinatum!