NATS 1880 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Solar Sail, Fuel, Copernican Principle
27 Aug 2015
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Document Summary
Distances are too large for currently rocket tech. Furthest probes ever sent are only about 100 au away from sun. Probes will remain intact during their journey. If one could increase the speed of a spacecraft by 100,000 times, would still take a year to reach the nearest star. Not only the time required, but the energy requirement is a challenge to space. Energy requirement depends on object"s mass and speed. Basis of newton"s 3rd law all actions have equal and opposite reaction. A rocket vaporizes on-board fuel that is directed out the back, propelling it forward. Can work in a vacuum of space. Mass after v has been reached = launch mass. Modern era began with german rocket (v2) in ww2. Interplanetary rockets work in basically same way as rockets almost a century ago. Engines burn a chemical fuel such as kerosene and oxygen. Gases expelled through a narrow nozzle propelling the spacecraft forward.
