A rocket ship is accelerating at 200 m/s2, its mas is 135,000,000 kg. What is the force generated by this acceleration?

Respuesta :

AL2006

Acceleration does NOT "generate" force.  Acceleration NEEDS force to make it happen.  Without force ... provided by something else ... acceleration can't happen.

The force NEEDED to accelerate a mass with a certain acceleration is

Force needed = (mass) times (acceleration)

For the rocket ship in the question,

Force = (135,000,000 kg) times (200 m/s²)

Force = (135,000,000 x 200) kg-m/s²

Force = 27 Giga-Newtons  (27,000,000,000 Newtons)


The gas-generator cycle F-1 rocket engine, developed in the US by Rocketdyne in the late 1950s, was used in the Saturn V rocket, the main launch vehicle of NASA's Apollo moon lander program .  Five F-1 engines were used in the first stage of each Saturn V.  

==> The thrust of each F-1 engine at full throttle is 7,770 kilo-Newtons.  

It would take 3,475 of these F-1 rocket engines, running full-throttle, to provide the force calculated in the answer to this question.  If you didn't have 3,475 F-1 rocket engines, then you couldn't accelerate 135,000,000 kg at 200 m/s².

(And by the way ... the mass of each F-1 engine is 8,400 kg.  So 3,475 engines alone account for 22% of the mass you're trying to accelerate.  And don't even get me started about the mass of the FUEL you'd need to carry.)