Why doesn't the math add up?
(media.greatawakening.win)
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I'm seeing a lot of explanations that don't make sense to me.
To me what your calculations are showing is that if it were to travel at the velocity stated in the article the entire duration of the trip, the total distance covered would be 120M miles.
I'm not an astrophysicist, but comparing that to the 300M number you're talking about seems reasonable just because of acceleration and deceleration.
300 million? That's a weird number to choose. Especially when Anons can refute it.
Probably average or something.
I am planetary-distance challenged and too bored to research it.
I chose 300M because that's what is stated in the headline of one of the articles that is the basis of this post.
I think when OP says why is A != B, I should talk about A and B, not C.
Yeah, accelerating to more than the stated speed would account for the discrepancy, but it's almost three times the distance, so that would mean the vehicle was travelling 75,000ish MPH or more and managed to also reverse this speed and land safely hundreds of millions of miles away. Doesn't that seem kinda fantastical to you? That's like Mach 100.
Oh yeah, it definitely sounds insane. Is it actually possible? I'm not sure. I know that with almost no gravitational force or air resistance in space to overcome, that accelerating should be easier. But I've always struggled with how any propulsion works in space with no air to push against...
The force that makes a rocket go up has nothing to do with the exhaust pushing against air. Newton's Third Law of Motion: Any force applied to an object will be subjected to an equal and opposite force from the object.
Chemical combustion in the engine creates an outward force and pressure that must escape through a nozzle. The engine itself is fixed, so that forward force is transferred to the rocket body. If the force is enough to overcome inertia, the rocket accelerates (First Law). How much force depends on the mass of the combustion products and the speed at which they travel (Second Law).
It's like firing a rifle. It has recoil, whether your shoulder is there to push against or not. That recoil is the sum total of the force expended pushing the bullet forward. Small bullet, big velocity. Big human, small velocity.
In a rocket, though, the bullets are much smaller (molecules) but there are trillions per second and traveling nearly 100,000 MPH leaving the nozzle.
Best explanation I've ever had, thanks! Molecules as trillions of bullets is a great vizualization.
About relativity to an object. 24k leaving earth becomes + earths speed through space, like the trow ball from train examples above. Adds both speeds. Read the great explanation above. OP got schooled with real physics.
Yeah that probably accounts a good amount of the difference. The article was also only 2 days after launch so it might not have been finished accelerating either.
I didn't even think about that.