NATS 1880 Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: British Interplanetary Society, Interstellar Travel, Tsiolkovsky Rocket Equation
17 May 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The large distances between stars, the speed of light being the fastest speed, and enormous amount of energy required to accelerate any ship to high speed are three difficulties with interstellar space. At current speeds it takes 100,000 years to reach the closest stars. The voyager carries a gold-coated copper record. According to einstein"s theory of relativity it is not possible to travel at or faster than the speed of light. The energy required to accelerate an interstellar spaceship depends on its mass and final velocity (mv2) The energy required to accelerate that titanic to 10% of speed of light, will require 100x the earth"s annual energy usage. Chemical rockets work on the principle of newton"s third law of motion. Chemical rockets are the most common type of spacecraft. The rocket equation relates final velocity to velocity of exhaust gases and ratio of the mass of rocket with all its fuel to mass of rocket after fuel has been consumed.
